Phantoms of the Other

Four Generations of Derrida's Geschlecht

David Farrell Krell

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438454511
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

During the 1980s Jacques Derrida wrote and published three incisive essays under the title Geschlecht, a German word for "generation" and "sexuality." These essays focused on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, taking up the rarely discussed issue of sexual difference in Heidegger's thought. A fourth essay—actually the third in the series—was never completed and never published. In Phantoms of the Other, David Farrell Krell reconstructs this third Geschlecht on the basis of archival materials and puts it in the context of the entire series. Touching on the themes of sexual difference, poetics, politics, and criticism as practiced by Heidegger, Derrida's unfinished third essay offers a penetrating critical analysis of Heidegger's views on sexuality and Heidegger's reading of the love poems of Georg Trakl, one of the greatest Expressionist poets of the German language, who died during the opening days of the First World War.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations of Works Cited
• Introduction
• 1. Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference
• 2. Geschlecht II: Heidegger’s Singular Hand
• 3. Of Spirit
• 4. Geschlecht IV: Heidegger’s Philopolemological Ear
• 5. Geschlecht III: A Truncated Typescript
• 6. Geschlecht III: The Phantom of the Other
• 7. The Magnetism of Georg and Gretl Trakl
• Appendix A: Poems Discussed in the Present Volume
• Appendix B: Poems Undiscussed
• Index
• Back Cover