The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II

The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Following on from The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, this book extends Jacques Derrida’s exploration of the connections between animality and sovereignty.  In this second year of the seminar, originally presented in 2002–2003 as the last course he would give before his death, Derrida focuses on two markedly different texts: Heidegger’s 1929–1930 course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. As he moves back and forth between the two works, Derrida pursues the relations between solitude, insularity, world, violence, boredom and death as they supposedly affect humans and animals in different ways.

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The University of Chicago Press