Leonard Lawlor investigates Derrida's writings on Husserl in order to determine Derrida's transformation of the basic problem of phenomenology from genesis to language. To do so, he lays out a narrative of the period during which Derrida devoted himslef to formulating and interpretation of Husserl, from approximately 1954 to 1967. On the basis of the narrative, certain well known Derridean concepts are determined (in relation primarily to Husserl's phenomenology): deconstruction, the metaphysics of presence, différance (and Derrida's initial concept of dialectic), the trace, and spectrality.

Author Biography: Leonard Lawlor is Dunavant Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. He is author of Imagination and Chance: The Difference between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida and co-editor (with Fred Evans) of Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of the Flesh. He is a founding editor of the journal Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.