A Surplus of Melancholy: the Discourse of Mourning in Freud, Benjamin and Derrida

Abstract

The author reviews the mourning, that is one of the most striking features of contemporary discourse in both literary theory and philosophy. Two different but related theories of mourning appear in Freud and Benjamin. In his turn, Derrida weaves the work of mourning into close analysis of texts and into an archive of European ideas and practices.