This series brings together internationally respected figures to comment on and re-describe the state of theory in the twenty-first century. It takes stock of an ever-expanding field of
knowledge and opens up possible new modes of inquiry within it, identifying new theoretical pathways, innovative thinking and productive motifs.
`Over the past forty years, Derek Attridge has engaged, quite possibly more meticulously than anyone else, the work and thought of Jacques Derrida. Through his abiding care for the working of
language, he reminds us just how exacting, how adventurous, how serious and how deeply responsive Derrida could be to the words and potential meanings of others.'---Thomas Docherty, Professor
of English and of Comparative Literature, University of Warwic
`This wonderful book admirably displays Derek Attridge's special gifts as a reader: clarity, learning, and penetrating understanding. It contains some of the best essays ever written about what
is distinctive in Derrida's thinking.'---J. Hillis Miller, UCI Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of California at Irvine
Reading and Responsibility examines the importance of deconstruction and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular for literary criticism today. Chapters include an overview of
deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing
of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and
philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader.
