Description: Based on archival translations of Derrida's as-yet untapped (1975-76) La vie la mort seminar, McCance's The Reproduction of Life Death offers an unprecedented study of Derrida's engagement both with the logic of reproduction held by 1970s molecular biology and genetics and with reproductivity as theorized and performed by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Brief description: Dawne McCance is Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba. Her books include Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction and Derrida On Religion.
Review Quotes: This is a superbly researched, written, and argued book on two of the most important though neglected aspects of Derrida's work: his reading of biology and his closely related work on academic institutions. It is a work that anyone who is serious about Derrida will want to read and will have to take into account.---Michael Naas, DePaul University