Abstract

In this article, the author examines passages from Jacques Derrida’s last seminars devoted to a comparative reading of Martin Heidegger’s The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. In this striking parallel, some recurring motifs in Derrida’s thought reappear, as well as a somewhat figure in Derrida’s work, namely the figure of cannibalism. The article links this figure to some of the classic writings in Derrida’s oeuvre, also in the light of the recent debate on the Anthropocene and postcolonial studies. The author’s idea is that precisely these extreme figures, which force the limit of philosophical reason, are fundamental to the understanding Derrida’s à venir, which is moved by the unrest of the worlds excluded from the domain of Western sovereignty