In The Deconstruction of Sex, Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and foster a better understanding of how sex complicates our everyday existence in the age of #MeToo. Throughout their conversation, Nancy and Goh engage with topics ranging from relation, penetration, and subjection to touch, erotics, and jouissance. They show how despite its entrenchment in social norms and centrality to our being-in-the-world, sex lacks a clearly defined essence. At the same time, they point to the potentiality of literature to inscribe the senses of sex. In so doing, Nancy and Goh prompt us to reconsider our relations with ourselves and others through sex in more sensitive, respectful, and humble ways without bracketing the troubling aspects of sex.

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and the author of numerous books, most recently Sexistence.

Irving Goh is President's Assistant Professor of Literature at the National University of Singapore and author of The Reject: Community, Politics, and Religion after the Subject and L’Existence Prépositionnelle.

Claire Colebrook is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Philosophy, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Introduction: Sex "Is" Deconstruction / Irving Goh  1
0. The Deconstruction of Sex: Opening Questions  16
1. Troubling Thought(s): Sex and Deconstruction  20
2. On Touching—Sex  35
3. Who Comes before/after Sex?  53
4. S/exscription  70
Afterword: Sex and the Killjoy / Claire Colebrook  83
Acknowledgments  93
Notes  95
Bibliography  105
Index  109