Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Derrida Post-Existentialist: 1. Humanist pretensions: Catholics, Communists and Sartre's struggle for existentialism in post-war France; 2. Derrida's 'Christian' existentialism; 3. Normalization: the �Ecole Normale Supe;rieure and Derrida's turn to Husserl; 4. Genesis as a problem: Derrida reading Husserl; 5. The God of mathematics: Derrida and the origin of geometry; Part II. Between Phenomenology and Structuralism: 6. A history of diffe;rance; 7. L'ambiguite; du concours: the deconstruction of commentary and interpretation in Speech and Phenomena; 8. The ends of man: reading and writing at the ENS; Epilogue.

"The intellectual history of postwar France often resembles village life. Most of the important academic institutions - the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supe�rieure, the College de France, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, even the cafes where Sartre debated with Camus - sit within the same square mile on the left bank of the Seine. This "village" was not only geographically limited. Names recur with surprising regularity: Bachelard, father and daughter, two Merleau-Pontys, as well as numerous Jolys, Lautmans, Pons and Michauds filling up the promotions at the elite centers for higher learning. The founder of Tel Quel, Philippe Sollers, married the philosopher Julia Kristeva; Jacques Lacan married Georges Bataille's widow; his daughter married the Lacanian Jacques-Alain Miller. Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Serres, and Jacques Derrida were schoolfriends before they were philosophical interlocutors and then rivals"-- Provided by publisher.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2013. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.