ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book examines the relationship between Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, ten years his senior and a first-rank figure in French thought. There is no right time, Nietzsche tells us, to die: one either goes too early or too late. It is certainly a thought that we can consider following the death in 2007 of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. On the one hand, his death at the age of 66 deprives readers and students of his guidance concerning modern writing and thought. Lacoue-Labarthe is both a diligent guide and a remorseless pace-setter, accompanying us over vastly divergent areas of modern writing and thought. Lacoue-Labarthe's writing does not fall into any clear chronological phases. The book explores their interaction as it is mediated by first Nietzsche and then Heidegger, always in relation to the radically destabilizing notion of l'ecriture.