Jacques Derrida and the Holocaust: 'Cinders', deconstruction, and excessive responsibility

My thesis explores the intersections between deconstruction and Holocaust Studies in Derrida's "Force of Law: The 'Mystical' Foundations of Authority" and Cinders. By defining Derrida's deconstruction as affirmative, my first chapter negotiates the ethical and political status of deconstruction, engaging objections in Paul Smith's Discerning the Subject, Dominick LaCapra's Representing the Holocaust, and Gayatri Spivak's Outside in the Teaching Machine. In particular, I focus on the varying associations of Derrida's deconstruction with the contemporary German revisionism of the historians of the Historikerstreit. My second chapter is a reading of Derrida's trope of the cinder and the questions surrounding the role of testimony and responsibility in historical and philosophical representations of the Holocaust. My final chapter traces the notion of "excessive responsibility" in Derrida's "Eating Well" and "Force of Law," in addition to Simon Critchley's The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. By investigating the relationship between deconstruction, law, and justice, I hope to clarify the importance of responsibility and the recourse to history in any negotiation of deconstruction and the Holocaust.