"A newcomer to the field would be surprised by the ubiquitous affirmation and the absence of critical tension in Derrida studies. The constitution of Derrida studies as a place of fundamental agreement between friends, rather than that of dissent and antagonism, can be seen as a consequence of the historical fact that the domain itself was under constant attack from the outside. The dangerous effect of this communal tranquility that outlaws frontal attacks can be the production of texts that do not do anything other than the doubling of text with a commentary."
(From this review.) Fair enough. (I find such sociological observations interesting, if only for what they suggest about the person making them.) I suspect it would be healthy for philosophy if folk ended the routine dismissal of Derrida and stopped treating his writings as a locus for communal tranquility. (True scholarly friends criticize each other, right?) But having noticed that the absence of a criticizing engagement may be problematic in this scholarly area, this reviewer then fails to discuss let alone criticize the contents of the chapters in the volume under review! (One chapter gets quoted, more or less.)
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