In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the reason of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'

Chapter 1 Acknowledgments Chapter 2 Polemical Introduction: A Pedagogical Prelude to Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida, Ethics, and the Scene of Teaching Chapter 3 1 The Cultural Politics of the Sign: The Ethics of Writing and the Other Chapter 4 2 The Ends of Pedagogy: From the Dialectic of Memory to the Deconstruction of the Institution Chapter 5 3 Technologies of Reason: Beyond the Principle of Reason as the Metaphysical Foundation of the University Chapter 6 4 Teaching the Other the Limits of Philosophy: Face-to-Face with the Violence of Difference Chapter 7 5 An Opening toward a praxis of the Future: The Ethics of Deconstruction and the Politics of Pedagogy Chapter 8 Index Chapter 9 About the Author