Based on archival translations of Derrida's as-yet untapped (1975-76) <i>La vie la mort </i>seminar, McCance's <i>Derrida and life death</i> offers an unprecedented study of Derrida's engagement both with the logic of reproduction held by 1970s molecular biology and genetics and with reproductivity as theorized and performed by Freud in <i>Beyond the Pleasure Principle</i>.