Geoffrey Bennington

Biographic Data

ID252952
NAMEGeoffrey Bennington
GIVEN NAMESGeoffrey
FAMILY NAMEBennington
SIGNATUREBENNINGTON G
AFFILIATIONSEmory University
ORCID0000-0002-7167-7508
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS61
TOTAL CITATIONS71
AUTHOR COUNT58
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1987
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX5

  • A Response to Stella Gaon's The Lucid Vigil

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLEPhilosophy Today2025

  • If you could read my mind

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLETextual Practice2025

    If you could read my mind, Nick, you would already know what I am going to say. And you would know from your mind-reading that what I am going to say is more especially about mind-reading, or ‘tele

  • Derrida on the Line: Scattered Reflections on the Frontiers, Borders, Limits and Ends of Deconstruction

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEWord and Text - A Journal of…2024

    Starting out from some early reservations in Derrida about linearity and formal deduction, both in general and as possible descriptions of his own work, this essay revisits some figures of lines and boundaries, limits and borders, frontiers and terms, to suggest the possibility of a more complex but still somewhat formalizable structure, a braided line or fractal curve, a quasi-linear and quasi-deductive ‘order of reasons’ that might hope to resp…

  • Thinking What Comes, 2: Institutions, Inventions, and Inscriptions

    Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington et al.BOOKThinking What Comes, 22024

    The first English-language translations of writings from the last years of Jacques Derrida’s life Collects Derrida’s later thoughts on topics including writing, racism and his school life English-language translations of previously untranslated essays and interviews Provides further insight into the thinker’s relationships with contemporary figures Contributes significantly to our understanding of Derrida’s work in politics, literary theory and p…

  • Thinking What Comes, Volume 1: Essays, Interviews, and Interventions

    Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington et al.BOOKThinking What Comes, Volume 12024

    The first English-language translations of writings from the last years of Jacques Derrida’s life Collects Derrida’s later writings on topics including political activism, archiving and ‘intellectualism’ English-language translations of previously untranslated essays and interviews Provides further insight into the thinker’s biography Contributes significantly to our understanding of Derrida’s work in politics, literary theory and philosophy In t…

  • Happy Reading

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEOxford Literary Review2022

    The ‘Happy Few’ of Stendhal's dedications are certainly readers, but they do not cohere into a community, and are vigilant and suspicious around the use of the first-person plural pronoun. This already sets them apart from the proponents of ‘surface reading’, who, moreover, have a historically questionable and conceptually feeble understanding of the intimate relationship between deconstruction and reading-and indeed of what thinking in terms of …

  • Scatter 2: Politics in Deconstruction

    Geoffrey BenningtonBOOKScatter 22021

    Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques De…

  • Geschlecht III

    Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida et al.BOOKGeschlecht III2020

  • Geschlecht pollachos legetai: Translation, Polysemia, Dissemination

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLEPhilosophy Today2020

    At an important moment in his reading of Heidegger in Geschlecht III, Derrida wields a pair of semi-technical terms (“polysemia” and “dissemination”) from his own earlier work, and uses them to identify a classical, indeed Aristotelian, vein in Heidegger’s reading of Trakl. This gesture is complex, both in that, in spite of appearances, the Mehrdeutigkeit Heidegger identifies in Trakl is not essentially to do with the term Geschlecht, and in that…

  • Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

    Geoffrey BenningtonBOOKScatter 12020

    What if political rhetoric is unavoidable, an irreducible part of politics itself? In contrast to the familiar denunciations of political horse-trading, grandstanding, and corporate manipulation from those lamenting the crisis in liberal democracy, this book argues that the "politics of politics," usually associated with rhetoric and sophistry, is, like it or not, part of politics from the start.Denunciations of the sorry state of current politic…

  • Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth

    Geoffrey BenningtonBOOKKant on the Frontier2020

    Frontier: the border between two countries; the limits of civilization; the bounds of established knowledge; a new field of activity. At a time when all borders, boundaries, margins, and limits are being—often violently—challenged, erased, or reinforced, we must rethink the concept of frontier itself. But is there even such a concept? Through an original and imaginative reading of Kant, Geoffrey Bennington casts doubt upon the conceptual coherenc…

  • Weird

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEOxford Literary Review2020

  • Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity

    Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington et al.BOOKGeschlecht III2020Cited by: 5

  • Theory and Practice

    Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Bennington et al.BOOKTheory and Practice2019

  • One Thousand Preliminary Words on “Big Old Theory”

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLEContemporary French and…2019

    “Big Old Theory” was never exactly “theory” in the first place

  • Métaphore, méta-force

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLERue Descartes2017

    partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manire que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord pralable et crit de l'diteur, en dehors des cas prvus par la lgislation en vigueur en France.Il est prcis que son stockage dans une base de donnes est galement interdit

  • The Democricy to Come

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEOxford Literary Review2017

    A recurrent typographical slip makes a democrat of Democritus, Demokratos of Demokritos, in an exemplary instance of the atomists' persistent analogy of atoms and letters. This essay argues that the rhythmic resonances between ancient materialism and democracy can be read in terms of a fundamental scatter that tends to deconstruct the teleologism endemic in the philosophical tradition's thinking about politics (and indeed matter). The curious res…

  • Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

    Geoffrey BenningtonBOOKScatter 12016

    Scatter 1 posits a politics of politics that is an irreducible part of politics itself. It is argued that this dimension of politics, usually associated with rhetoric and sophistry, is, like it or not, part of politics from the start, and that those who denounce it do so on essentially metaphysical (Platonic) grounds. Failure to deconstruct those grounds generates a politically debilitating dogmatism and moralism that this book attempts to unders…

  • Notes towards a Discussion of Method and Metaphor in Glas

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEParagraph2016References: 1

    At several moments Glas proposes what it is hard not to see as methodological comments on its own procedure. These comments are usually quite difficult, and often involve dense figurative characterizations of the way the work proceeds, always folding any apparent metalinguistic position back on to the object text. After detailed discussion of several of these moments, a second section examines Derrida's deconstruction of Hegel's account of metaph…

  • Politique, Derrida

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLELignes2016

  • Heidegger: The Question of Being and History

    Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey BenningtonBOOKHeidegger2016Cited by: 5

  • A besta e o soberano: Três notas para Derrida

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEAlea Estudos Neolatinos2015References: 1

    Partindo do entrelaçamento original entre os conceitos de soberania e bestialidade elaborado por Jacques Derrida nos seminários de A besta e o soberano, este ensaio investiga as formas pelas quais tal entrelaçamento é pensado por três filósofos que se debruçaram sobre o tema. Em Aristóteles, está em questão a tensão no conceito de homem ideal, aquele que, por ser ideal, não é naturalmente político - politikon zoon- e, portanto, como um deus ou um…

  • Dignité de Derrida

    Geoffrey BenningtonARTICLERue Descartes2014

  • Aesthetics Interrupted: The Art of Deconstruction

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEOxford Literary Review2014

    The principle whereby any bit of deconstruction brings with it all of deconstruction must affect the philosophical understanding of art usually subsumed under the title ‘aesthetics’. There can in principle be no deconstructive aesthetics (any more than there could be a deconstructive ethics or a deconstructive epistemology. Aesthetics in general is mortgaged to sensory perception, and from very early Derrida ‘perception does not exist’. Whence hi…

  • Hap

    Open AccessGeoffrey BenningtonARTICLEOxford Literary Review2014