Rating: 
Summary: Great fun, but I differ with the conclusion
Review: There are a number of books on the market whose titles begin with "Of" ("Of Mice and Men," "Of Course I Can Cook") and I have generally enjoyed them. This particular work is less satisfying on a number of levels, not the least of which is its rather uncompromising use of the letter "P." Still, the plotting is exciting, the characters vivid and their portraits poignant. But in the end, can it really be said that the structures of perception inherent in our language can reveal parallel structures of domination and oppression in the political world? More importantly, can it really be said without using the letter "P" quite so much?Readers who are interested in this subject matter may want to investigate some of the later works of Sean Hannity and Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose treatises on language and morality used a much richer selection of hard consonants.
Rating: 
Summary: it is what it is
Review: This book is not for everyone. Derrida's poststructuralism made several new critical approaches possible, and his contribution to the analysis of language is interesting at least for that. If you are not a fan of Deconstruction, which means looking at the different parts of a text and how they make up the whole (rather than Destruction, which would mean taking apart the house), then this book is obviously not for you. You are looking for Harold Bloom, and you will find him. My suggestion is that you read this book only if you have an open mind and the desire to test your perspective on a number of subjects against that of one of this century's great philosophers.
Rating: 
Summary: No Excuse for Incohate Writings
Review: This is deconstruction's nascent tome, written in a style and manner designed to obfuscate rather than elucidate -- a problem associated with many French and German thinkers. The thrust of deconstruction is the unstable meanings of words leads to unstable meanings in texts and elsewhere. Built upon the foundations of de Saussure, semiotics is taken to its ultimate scam, namely that the plurality of readings and dangling verbs and nouns make stable meanings impossible. But alas, Kripke and others have shown that nouns and verbs do have stable meanings, that the logic of deconstruction degrades into its own circularity, and that differences in meanings does not mean there are no shared meanings. What's rude about this book and others like it is that it cannot just say this, but has to create neologism and syntatical abuse after abuse to hint at this thesis (otherwise, the simple declaration of what it is would undermine its very theoretical basis). But, don't be fooled or lulled into silly syntax and semantics that is more giddy and goofey than substantive and think the inpenetrable language therefore substantiates its "non-claims." The skeptic, which is a core constituency of this kind of book, will always find ways not to agree with others, but that doesn't mean there isn't shared knowledge, much less that language is so unstable as to have any shared meaning. In a nutshell, this is verbose nonsense. It's passe, and it's boring.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This text is worth the effort and cost, if only for the fantastic introduction by Spivak -- perhaps the nicest introduction to Deconstruction available. The Introduction itself, was, in fact required reading for comp-lit classes studying Deconstruction at Yale in the mid-80s -- the time of DeMann, Hartmann and J. Hillis Miller.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This text is worth the effort and cost, if only for the fantastic introduction by Spivak -- perhaps the nicest introduction to Deconstruction available. The Introduction itself, was, in fact required reading for comp-lit classes studying Deconstruction at Yale in the mid-80s -- the time of DeMann, Hartmann and J. Hillis Miller.
Rating:
Summary: Among the most important texts of the 20th century
Review: This volume is central to Derrida's project and is, perhaps, his single most important work. In it, one finds the essentail contentions that inform his other essays. Whether one views, from the analytic tradition, these concepts as indulgent rubish or as culmination of a pre-Socratic force hidden under the ubiquitous effects of Plato and Aristotle, they are critical in understanding the disjunctions of philosophy. While Derrida's writing may be difficult because it is both dense and playful, allusive and iconoclastic,these presentational "quirks" are not empty but tied to the basic structures of his argumentation. Since its publication, popular characterizations of this book have attributed to it positions it does not hold. Derrida is, among his other gifts, a scholar of the first order and behind his statements are close readings of many of the philosphical greats that preceded his effort. This is not the babbling of the manic mind but a huge encounter with the dominant tradition of interpretation. Such a gigantic target cannot be exhausted in one volume, but even if one wishes to affirm the analytic tradition, this volume should be read with the respect and care one gives a worthy enemy.
Rating: 
Summary: Postmodern joke
Review: Whatever all the British traditionalists and analytic philosophers say, Derrida is obviously highly intelligent, but the problem with his work, including this one, is that he just never gets anywhere. He talks at length and with great complexity and detail about sideline topics, and while none of it is 'gibberish' or 'unintelligible', it's not all that relevant. The people who are too stupid to understand Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and metaphysics in general tend to criticise European philosophers unfairly, but in the case of Derrida, while he certainly isn't the meaningless charlatan they claim him to be, you get the feeling you're being cheated when you read his books - it's just a massive, complex, intellectual joke.
Rating:
Summary: Push through it
Review: When I first tried to tackle this book I was a first year undergrad philosophy and logic student - I declared Derrida my arche-enemy.
Three years later I am devoted to Derrida.
I eventually managed to push down the frustration (and at times, the blind rage) I felt at reading his stuff and took my time to follow him where he wants to take us.
Derrida is important for thinking, whether or not you agree with what he is saying.
Derrida's greatest lesson is forcing us to look closer, he wants us to pay attention to what is really going on (or at least, to pay attention to other possibilities that may be at work)
Rating: 
Summary: All you need from Derrida
Review: While this book offers up some interesting concepts, I find that much of it is borrowed from earlier philosophical explorations. Derrida's work is an attempt to link language, and the use thereof, to epistemology, but it is an epistemology that is underdeveloped. The concept that everything is "text" is really nothing new. The classical (Aristotelian) idea that thought is built upon two things 1) simple apprehension 2) judgement depends upon the use of language to function properly. I "signify" and then make judgements upon my signification. Derrida is the 20th century nominalist -still in rebellion over whether or not things have meaning in and of themselves -that labels we create can denote "essence". Problems with insisting that a system of binary oppositions (black / white) is the foundation by which we reason are apparent when we consider terms which have no opposite. "Being" the opposite of which is "Non-being" for instance. This is not a binary, this is a negation. Therefore, much of deconstruction is inherently illogical. Could even Derrida maintain that we can only know the world equivocally and nothing can be known univocally? The issue with Derrida is the problem that many modern philosophers and academics struggle with today -the problem of "specialization." Derrida's most effective arguments arise within the sphere of linguistics. If viewed from a different perspective, such as that of Logic or Epistemology, many of his assertions appear absurd. This led the French philosopher, along with many of his followers (especially in the US) to denounce traditional metaphysics, and to proclaim the invalidity of prior reasoning. Such an approach is problematic to say the least. If I were to create my own mathematics, I doubt I would be taken seriously. If we consider this a work of linguistics, however, we can gain much from it. While far too complex to summarize here, Derrida's ideas should be taken into consideration, even if his prose (and again, this has much to do with translation) is convoluted. After reading Derrida for an hour, I often find myself picking up a work from Ortega or Marias, just to see the dramatic difference between philosophers who can write, and those who cannot. Other works on linguistics and philosophy that are useful, include those by John of St. Thomas, and Francis Suarez. You will gain more from these two individuals than you will from Derrida.
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