ABSTRACT
In the first aspect of its double function, Textualities can be read as a presentation and evaluation of continental philosophy from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to Foucault and Derrida. On the periphery of this historical account, the reader will also find considerations of Nietzsche, Sartre, Barthes, Blanchot, and Kristeva. In this respect, Textualities can be read as a report on the principal concerns of continental philosophy from the mid-1930s---especially Heidegger's essay "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935-36)-to Derrida's writings on truth in painting and on the university. Textualities is a kind of sequel to Inscriptions, which interprets continental philosophy from the later work of Edmund Husserl and the early Heidegger through the early MerleauPonty and Sartre. The subsequent treatment of Foucault and Derrida in Inscriptions addresses the problem of the displacement of the self and the human subject in contemporary thought. Textualities returns to the question of the self and the human subject as textualized-namely as inscribed in autobiography, in painting, in photography, in literature, and in the institutions of philosophy, such as the university.
