Life Death

The seventh in our series of Derrida's seminars, Life Death provides interdisciplinary reflections on the relationship of life and death¿now in paperback. One of Jacques Derrida¿s most provocative works, Life Death deconstructs a deeply rooted dichotomy of Western thought: life and death. In rethinking the relationship between life and death, Derrida undertakes a multi-disciplinary analysis of a range of topics across philosophy, linguistics, and the life sciences. Derrida gave this seminar over fourteen sessions between 1975 and 1976 at the École normale supérieure in Paris to prepare students for the agrégation, a notoriously competitive exam. The theme for the exam that year was ¿Life and Death,¿ but Derrida made a critical modification to the title by dropping the coordinating conjunction. The resulting title of Life Death poses a philosophical question about the close relationship between life and death. Through close readings of¿Freudian psychoanalysis, the philosophy of Nietzsch