The Tain of the Mirror : Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection

Deconstruction is no game of mirrors, revealing the text as a play of surface against surface. Its more radical philosophical effort is to get behind the mirror and question the very nature of reflection. The Tain of the Mirror (tain names the tinfoil, or lusterless back of the mirror) explores that gritty surface without which no reflection would be possible. Gasche does what no one has done before in many discussions of Derrida, namely to tie his work in an authoritative way to its origins in the history of the criticism of reflexivity.


Introduction
PART 1: TOWARD THE LIMITS OF REFLECTION
1. Defining Reflection
2. The Philosophy of Reflection
3. The Self-Destruction of Reflection
Isolated Reflection
Philosophical Reflection
Speculative or Absolute Reflection
4. Identity, Totality, and Mystic Rapture
5. Post-Hegelian Criticism of Reflexivity
6. Beyond Reflection: The Interlacings of Heterology
PART 2: ON DECONSTRUCTION
7. Abbau, Destruktion, Deconstruction
8. Deconstructive Methodology
The Propaedeutics of Deconstruction
Against Neutrality
Infrastructural Accounting
The Marginal Inscription of the Ground
The Bipartite Operation of Deconstruction
9. A System beyond Being
The Infrastructural Chain
The General Theory of Doubling
The General System
PART 3: LITERATURE OR PHILOSOPHY?
10. Literature in Parentheses
11. The Inscription of Universality
Writing
Text
Metaphor
Notes
Bibliography
Index