The Work of Mourning

One must go before the other. This inevitability bestows upon the mourner a further inevitability - to say something and to participate in the codes and rites of mourning. The distinguished French philosopher Jacques Derrida has been forced to wrestle with the complexities of mourning, as colleagues and friends passed away before him. This volume gathers together letters of condolence, memorial essays, eulogies and funeral orations, written after the deaths of figures well known in France and the US: Roland Barthes, Paul de man, Louis Marin, Emmanuel Levinas, Joseph Riddel and Michel Serviere to name but a few. Many essays are available in English for the first time. Each chapter has an introduction and a biographical sketch of its subject. Derrida bears witness to the singularity of friendship and to the uniqueness of each relationship. He is aware of the questions of tact, taste and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead, and the risk of using the occasion of death for one's own reason. This collection of memorial addresses captures Derrida's relation to prominent French thinkers and his thoughts on some important themes - mourning, the "gift of death", time, memory and friendship.