Chronicle of Separation ─ On Deconstruction's Disillusioned Love

A unique feminist approach to the legacy of Jacques Derrida, Chronicle of Separation is a disparate yet beautifully interwoven series of distinct readings, genres, and themes, offering a powerful reflection of love in-and as-deconstruction. Looking especially at relationships between women, Ben-Naftali provides a wide-ranging investigation of interpersonal relationships: the love of a teacher, the anxiety-ridden bond between a mother and daughter as manifested in anorexia, passion between two women, love after separation and in mourning, the tension between one's self and the internalized other. Traversing each of these investigations,Chronicle of Separation takes up Derrida's Memoires for Paul de Man and The Post Card, Lillian Hellman's famed friendship with a woman named Julia, and adaptations of the biblical Book of Ruth. Above all, it is a treatise on the love of theory in the name of poetry, a passionate book on love and friendship.

MICHAL BEN-NAFTALI is a writer and a translator who lectures at Tel Aviv University. Her other books includeThe Visitation of Hannah Arendt, Childhood, a Book-a Novella, On Retreat: Four Essays, and Spirit. Her translations into Hebrew include works by Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Andre Breton, and Maurice Blanchot.

MIRJAM HADAR is an editor and translator who lives in Tel Aviv.

AVITAL RONELL is University Professor of the Humanities and a professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature at New York University. Her most recent book isLoser Sons: Politics and Authority.