The book begins with an analysis of Derrida’s attachment to the French language, to Europe, and to European secular thought, before turning to Derrida’s long engagement with America and to the ways in which deconstruction allows us to rethink the history, identity, and promise of post–9/11 America. Taking as its point of departure several later works (from “Faith and Knowledge” and The Work of Mourning to Rogues and Learning to Live Finally), the book demonstrates how Derrida’s analyses of the phantasms of sovereignty, the essential autoimmunity of democracy or religion, or the impossible mourning of the nation-state can help us to understand what is happening today in American culture, literature, and politics.