Dissemination

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by Jacques Derrida,

Translated by Barbara Johnson

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published February 1983, 366 pages, paper

ISBN 0226143341

"The English version of Dissemination [is] an able translation by Barbara Johnson...Derrida's central contention is that languge is haunted by dispersal, absence, loss, the risk of unmeaning, a risk which is starkly embodied in all writing. The distinction between philosophy and literature therefore becomes of secondary importance. Philosphy vainly attempts to control the irrecoverable dissemination of its own meaning, it strives - against the grain of language - to offer a sober revelation of truth. Literature - on the other hand - flaunts it own meretriciousness, abandons itself to the Dionysiac play of language. In Dissemination - more than in any previous work - Derrida joins in the revelry, weaving a complex pattern of puns, verbal echoes allusions, intended to 'deconstruct' both the pretense of criticsm to tell the truth about literature, and the pretension of philosophy to be the litearature of truth." - Peter Dews, New Statesman