K. Malcolm Richards is associate professor and Chair of the Graduate Programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Derrida studies and art theory will receive a salutary jolt from Richards's rigorous parallels when he puts in conversation Derrida and artists like Duchamp, Broodthaers, Asher, Eichhorn, Haacke, Ukeles, Lawler, Rowland, Wilson or Wodiczko; to their specific practices, terms such as ""différance,"" ""hauntology,"" or ""parergon"" immediately add depth, insight, and contour. Thus a different picture of Derrida emerges, less the nihilist philosopher than a conceptual artist who explodes philosophical archives from Plato, Kant, and Heidegger in order to promote and renew institutional critique. Proximate Difference in Aesthetics reveals an unseen relationship between Jacques Derrida's philosophy and the Institutional Critique. In this thought-provoking book, Kevin Richards provides the reader with a fresh understanding of both Derrida's philosophy and the Institutional Critique, particularly their mutual attempts to destabilize the traditions and conditions that shaped the ontological foundations of their respective fields. In this original book, Kevin Richards insightfully underscores the transformative--yet overlooked--implications of Derrida's philosophy in the field of visual arts.