Title: Close Reading without all the New Criticism Baggage
Review: If you're looking for nihilism, denials of metaphysics, or other such silliness, this book has none of them. If you're looking for insightful close-readings of some Platonic dialogues and their ethical implications, this book does that quite well.Derrida's two essays deal with the foreigner in Plato, and he does quite a nice job of articulating the tensions inherent in hospitality--the home into which the stranger enters is my home, but I have to yield place to the stranger while remaining solidly the proprietor of the home. That tension extends to national identities, theological questions, and all sorts of other fun stuff by the end of the book.I still have not read the commentary in the facing columns of the book, so read some other reviews if you'd like to know about them.
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