In Dissemination - more than in any previous work - Derrida weav[es] a complex pattern of puns, verbal echoes and allusions, intended to ‘deconstruct’ both the pretension of criticism to tell the truth about literature, and the pretension of philosophy to be the literature of truth. New Statesman

Jacques Derrida (1930-) is Professor of Philosophy at Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. Regarded as the founding father of Deconstruction, his influence on contemporary thought has been enormous. His impact on philosophy and literary criticism was assured by the publication of Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology.

First published in 1972, Dissemination contains three of Derrida’s most central and seminal works: ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, ‘The Double Session’ and ‘Dissemination’. The essays present a re-evaluation of the logic of meaning and the function of writing in Western discourse. This is a groundbreaking work on the relationship and interplay between language, literature and philosophy.

Translated, with an Introduction and Additional Notes by Barbara Johnson