Avital Ronell is currently one of the world´s most renowned and stimulating literary scholars; she has worked with Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman, among others. Her new book analyses the decline of various forms of authority. In writing about Alexandre Kojève, Sarah Kofman and Hannah Arendt, Ronell examines the melancholy which accompanies the diagnosis of the burnout of authority. Didn´t we conceive of authority as a stabilizing factor for many forms of life, criticizing which was always

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... e by respect for what was criticized? Indeed, deconstruction never simply equals destruction. In times of widespread political regression, of which populism is only one manifestation among others, Ronell's inventive ideas have a contemporary significance.