Abstract

This essay elaborates and engages an influential reading of the late Derrida as put forth in J. Hillis Miller's book For Derrida. Sensitive to the complicated ambiguities and nuances of Derrida's deconstructive philosophy, Miller elucidates how our common preconceptions are intimately bound up with the very facts of life which we do our best to marginalize and reject. Mourning, for example, cannot be so easily distinguished from melancholy when the loss of the other is impossible for us to completely work through. Miller thus provides us with a careful analysis of precisely that which so often resists analysis, and does so in an accessible manner. I will nonetheless argue that the deconstructive project is susceptible to its own reifications, and that Miller's sharp delineation between the individual and community is one such example.