Marion and Derrida on The Gift and Desire: Debating the Generosity of Things

This book examines the various encounters between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida on the gift, considers their many differences on desire, and demonstrates how these topics hold the keys to some of phenomenology s most pressing structural questions, especially regarding deconstructive approaches within the field.  The book claims that the topic of desire is a central lynchpin to understanding the two thinkers conflict over the gift, for the gift is reducible to the desire to give, which initiates a turn to the topic of generosity.   To what degree might loving also imply giving? How far might it be suggested that love is reducible to desire and intentionality? It is demonstrated how Derrida (the generative father of deconstruction) rejects the possibility of any potential relation between the gift and desire on the account that desire is bound to calculative repetition, economical appropriation, and subject-centered interests that hinder deconstruction.  Whereas Marion (a representative of the phenomenological tradition) demands a unique union between the gift and desire, which are both represented in his reduction to givenness and erotic reduction. The book is the first extensive attempt to contextualize the stark differences between Marion and Derrida within the phenomenological legacy (Husserl, Heidegger, Kant), supplies readers with in-depth accounts of the topics of the gift, love, and desire, and demonstrates another means through which the appearing of phenomena might be understood, namely, according to the generosity of things.

This book examines the various encounters between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida on “the gift,” considers their many differences on “desire,” and demonstrates how these topics hold the keys to some of phenomenology’s most pressing structural questions, especially regarding “deconstructive” approaches within the field.  The book claims that the topic of desire is a central lynchpin to understanding the two thinkers’ conflict over the gift, for the gift is reducible to the “desire to give,” which initiates a turn to the topic of “generosity.”  To what degree might loving also imply giving? How far might it be suggested that love is reducible to desire and intentionality? It is demonstrated how Derrida (the generative “father” of deconstruction) rejects the possibility of any potential relation between the gift and desire on the account that desire is bound to calculative repetition, economical appropriation, and subject-centered interests that hinder deconstruction.  Whereas Marion (a representative of the phenomenological tradition) demands a unique union between the gift and desire, which are both represented in his “reduction to givenness” and “erotic reduction.”

The book is the first extensive attempt to contextualize the stark differences between Marion and Derrida within the phenomenological legacy (Husserl, Heidegger, Kant), supplies readers with in-depth accounts of the topics of the gift, love, and desire, and demonstrates another means through which the appearing of phenomena might be understood, namely, according to the generosity of things.

1. Introduction: Histories of the Gift and Desire.- Part 1. Marion, the Gift, and Desire.- 2. Marion’s The Adonné Or “The Given:” between Passion and Passivity.- 3. The Manifolds of Desire and Love in Marion’s The Erotic Phenomenon.- 4. Marion on Love and Givenness: Desiring to Give What One Lacks.- Part 2. Derrida, Desire, and the Gift.-  5. Indifference: Derrida beyond Husserl, Intentionality, and Desire.- 6. Desire in Derrida’s Given Time: There is (Es gibt) No Gift Outside the Text.- 7. The Gift in Derrida’s Deconstruction: Affirming the Gift through Denegation.- Part 3. Before Marion’s Phenomenology, After Derrida’s Deconstruction.- 8. Four Tensions between Marion and Derrida: Close yet Extremely Distant.- 9. Conclusion: The Generosity of Things: Between Phenomenology and Deconstruction.