Abstract
J. Hillis Miller opens Literature as Conduct with a dedication to Jacques Derrida, "a gesture not only toward the relation of this book to Derrida's books and seminars, but also toward the memory of my almost forty years of unclouded friendship" with him (11). Literature as Conduct is a contribution to Miller's work that explores the relation of literary language to life in, for example, The Ethics of Reading (1987), Speech Acts in Literature (2001), and articles adapted for these and other books, such as his "Derrida and Literature" in Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (2001).