Of Grammatology

The book that transformed critical thought, revisited for a new generation.

Since its publication in English, Of Grammatology has remained one of the most influential works of twentieth-century thought. Jacques Derrida's sustained critique of Western metaphysics reshaped debates across philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and the human sciences, introducing deconstruction as both a method and a challenge to inherited assumptions about meaning, language, and presence.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition revisits Derrida's landmark text with renewed attention to its intellectual afterlives. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's translation—long recognized for its precision and ambition—has been carefully revised to reflect decades of engagement with Derrida's work and its reception. Spivak's new preface to the introduction helps recontextualize this inventive work of scholarship and its ongoing relevance. Of Grammatology remains a demanding and generative work that invites readers to rethink foundational concepts of writing, structure, and difference. This anniversary edition makes one of modern criticism's indispensable texts newly accessible while preserving the rigor that has defined its legacy.