Jacques Derrida (IPA: in French /ʒak dɛʁida/^[1], in English /ʒæk dɛɹɪˈdɑː/) (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work has had a profound impact upon continental philosophy, French philosophy, and literary theory. His best known work is Of Grammatology. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... is the 196th day of the year (197th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 281st day of the year (282nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. ... Continental philosophy is a term used in philosophy to designate one of two major traditions of modern Western philosophy. ... Twentieth-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War 2 French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements. ... Literary theory is the theory (or the philosophy) of the interpretation of literature and literary criticism. ... De la grammatologie is a book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, first published in 1967 by Les Éditions de Minuit. ...

Life

Derrida was born on July 15, 1930, in El-Biar (near Algiers), then French Algeria, into a Sephardic Jewish family, the 3rd of 5 children. His given name was Jackie, though he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name.^[2] His youth was spent in El-Biar, Algeria. is the 196th day of the year (197th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... “Alger” redirects here. ... In the strictest sense, a Sephardi (ספרדי, Standard Hebrew Səfardi, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardî; plural Sephardim: ספרדים, Standard Hebrew Səfardim, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardîm) is a Jew original to the... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination...

On the first day of the school year in 1942, Derrida was expelled from his lycée by French administrators implementing anti-Semitic quotas set by the Vichy government. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students. At this time, as well as taking part in numerous football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player), Derrida read works of philosophers and writers such as Rousseau, Camus, Nietzsche, and Gide. He began to think seriously about philosophy around 1948 and 1949. He became a boarding student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, which he did not enjoy. Derrida failed his entrance examination twice before finally being admitted to the École Normale Supérieure at the end of the 1951–52 school year. In France, secondary education is divided into two schools: the collège (IPA: ) (somewhat comparable to U.S. junior high school) for the first four years directly following primary school; the lycée (IPA: ) (comparable to a U.S. high school) for the next three years. ... Manifestations Slavery Racial profiling Lynching Hate speech Hate crime Genocide (examples) Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing Pogrom Race war Religious persecution Gay bashing Blood libel Paternalism Police brutality Movements Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid Redlining Internment Anti-discriminatory Emancipation Civil rights Desegregation Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action Racial... Motto Travail, famille, patrie French: Unoccupied zone of Vichy France (until November 1942) Capital Vichy Capital-in-exile Sigmaringen (1944-1945) Language(s) French Religion Roman Catholic Government Dictatorship Chief of state  - 1940 — 1944 Philippe Pétain President of the Council  - 1940 — 1942 Philippe Pétain  - 1942 — 1944 Pierre Laval... A player (wearing the red kit) has penetrated the defence (in the white kit) and is taking a shot at goal. ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. ... For other uses, see Camus. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: ) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. ... André Gide in 1893 Gide redirects here, for other people named Gide, see Gide (disambiguation) André Paul Guillaume Gide (November 22, 1869 – February 19, 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. ... The Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in Paris is one of the most famous lycées providing preparatory classes for grandes écoles. ... See also École Normale de Musique de Paris. ...

On his first day at the École Normale Supérieure Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends. He also befriended Michel Foucault, whose lectures he attended. After visiting the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium, he completed his philosophy agrégation on Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry." Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and in June 1957 married Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston. During the Algerian War of Independence, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seʁ) (October 16, 1918 – October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ... Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. ... The Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven was founded in 1889 by Cardinal Désiré Mercier to be a beacon of Neo-Thomist philosophy. ... Geography Country Belgium Community Flemish Community Region Flemish Region Province Flemish Brabant Arrondissement Leuven Coordinates , , Area 56. ... In France, the agrégation is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Combatants FLN (1954-62) MNA (1954-62) France (1954-62) FAF (1960-61) OAS (1961-62) Commanders Mostefa Benboulaïd Ferhat Abbas Hocine Aït Ahmed Ahmed Ben Bella Krim Belkacem Larbi Ben MHidi Rabah Bitat Mohamed Boudiaf Messali Hadj General Jacques Massu General Maurice Challe Bachaga Said Boualam... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Following the war Derrida began a long association with the Tel Quel group of literary and philosophical theorists. At the same time, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the Sorbonne, and from 1964 to 1984 at the École Normale Superieure. He completed his Thèse d'État in 1980; the work was subsequently published in English translation as "The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations". His wife Marguerite gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. Beginning with his 1966 lecture at Johns Hopkins University, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," his work assumed international prominence. A second son, Jean, was born in 1967. In the same year, Derrida published his first three books—Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology—which would make his name. Disambiguation : for the Moroccan weekly newspaper see here. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... The quadrangle at the main ENS building on rue dUlm is known as the Cour aux Ernests – the Ernests being the goldfish in the pond. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... De la grammatologie is a book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, first published in 1967 by Les Éditions de Minuit. ...

In 1983 Derrida collaborated with Ken McMullen on the film Ghost Dance. Derrida appears in the film as himself and also contributed to the script. Ken McMullen is an award-winning film director and artist living currently in London. ... Ghost Dance is a 1983 British film directed by Ken McMullen. ...

Derrida travelled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions. Derrida was director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. With François Châtelet and others he in 1983 co-founded the Collège international de philosophie (CIPH), an institution intended to provide a location for philosophical research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academy. He was elected as its first president. The École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (French for School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences; EHESS) is a French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. ... This article is about the capital of France. ... François Châtelet (d. ... The Collège International de Philosophie (Ciph), located in Paris Ve arrondissement, is an open university co-founded in 1983 by Jacques Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Faye and Dominique Lecourt in an attempt to re-think the teaching of philosophy in France, and to liberate it from...

In 1984, Derrida had a third son, Daniel, with Sylviane Agacinski. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

In 1986 he became Professor of the Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. UCI and the Derrida family are currently involved in a legal dispute regarding exactly what materials constitute his archive, part of which was informally bequeathed to the university.^[3] He was a regular visiting professor at several other major American universities, including Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and New York University, and The New School for Social Research. The University of California, Irvine is a public research university primarily situated in suburban Irvine, California, USA. Founded in 1965, it is one of ten University of California campuses and is commonly known as UCI or UC Irvine. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... Yale redirects here. ... New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in New York City. ... The New School for Social Research is the graduate division of The New School. ...

Derrida was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the 2001 Adorno-Preis from the University of Frankfurt. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Cambridge University, Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, the University of Essex, University of Leuven, and Williams College. The House of the Academy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... University of Frankfurt may refer to two (or three) German universities: the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) in Frankfurt am Main the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)) in Frankfurt (Oder), or its historical predecessor... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... Alma Mater Columbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ... The New School for Social Research is the graduate division of The New School. ... The University of Essex rules is a British plate glass university. ... The Catholic University of Leuven, founded in 1425, is now the names of two Belgian universities, after the original university split in 1968: the Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, and the French-speaking Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium This is a disambiguation page — a... Williams College is a private, liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. ...

In 2003, Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which reduced his speaking and travelling engagements. He died in a Parisian hospital on the evening of October 8, 2004.^[4] Pancreatic cancer is a malignant tumor within the pancreatic gland. ... is the 281st day of the year (282nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Work

Introduction

Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly speaking be called "phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent, the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was precisely the false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in 1959 Derrida asks the question: must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?^[5] This article is about the philosophical movement. ... Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ...

In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.^[6] At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.^[7] It is this thought of originary complexity, rather than original purity, which destabilises the thought of both genesis and structure, that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which derive all of its terms, including deconstruction.^[8]

Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating all the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.^[9]

Early works

At the very beginning of his philosophical career Derrida was concerned to elaborate a critique of the limits of phenomenology. His first lengthy academic manuscript, written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'études supérieures and submitted in 1954, concerned the work of Edmund Husserl.^[10] In 1962 he published Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, which contained his own translation of Husserl's essay. It can plausibly be argued that with this commentary Derrida had already posed the basis of his whole path of thinking.^[11][12] In the interviews collected in Positions (1972), Derrida said: "In this essay the problematic of writing was already in place as such, bound to the irreducible structure of 'deferral' in its relationships to consciousness, presence, science, history and the history of science, the disappearance or delay of the origin, etc. [...] this essay can be read as the other side (recto or verso, as you wish) of Speech and Phenomena."^[13] This article is about the philosophical movement. ... Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859, ProstÄ›jov – April 26, 1938, Freiburg) was a German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology. ...

Derrida first received major attention outside France with his lecture, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," delivered at Johns Hopkins University in 1966 (and subsequently included in Writing and Difference). The conference at which this paper was delivered was concerned with structuralism, then at the peak of its influence in France, but only beginning to gain attention in the United States. Derrida differed from other participants by his lack of explicit commitment to structuralism, having already been critical of the movement. He praised the accomplishments of structuralism but also maintained reservations about its internal limitations, thus leading to the notion that his thought was a form of post-structuralism. Near the beginning of the essay, Derrida argued: The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

(...) the entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of centre for centre, as a linked chain of determinations of the centre. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the centre receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix [...] is the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It could be shown that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the centre have always designated an invariable presence – eidos, archē, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), alētheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth. Plato (Left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. ... This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ... In rhetoric, metonymy is the substitution of one word for another word with which it is associated. ... In ontology, a being is anything that can be said to be, either transcendantly or immanently. ... Eidos Interactive is a publisher of video and computer games based in Britain. ... In the ancient Greek philosophy, arche (ἀρχή) is the beginning or the first principle of the world. ... It has been proposed below that Telos be renamed and moved to Telos (Star Wars). ... Energeia is an important Greek technical term in the works of Aristotle. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... Aletheia in its current sense comes from Heideggers use of it as renewed attempt to understand Truth. ...

– "Structure, Sign and Play" in Writing and Difference, p. 353.

The effect of Derrida's paper was such that by the time the conference proceedings were published in 1970, the title of the collection had become The Structuralist Controversy. The conference was also where he met Paul de Man, who would be a close friend and source of great controversy, as well as where he first met the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, with whose work Derrida enjoyed a mixed relationship. Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist. ... Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French IPA: ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. ...

1967–1972

Derrida's work demonstrated an interest in all the disciplines under discussion at the Baltimore conference, as was evinced by the subject of the three collections of work published in 1967: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena.^[14] These three books contained readings of the work of many philosophers and authors, including Husserl, linguist de Saussure, Heidegger, Rousseau, Lévinas, Hegel, Foucault, Bataille, Descartes, anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, paleontologist Leroi-Gourhan, psychoanalyst Freud, and writers such as Edmond Jabès and Antonin Artaud. The fundamental questions asked in these essays are "What is 'meaning,' what are its historical relationships to what is purportedly identified under the rubric 'voice' as a value of presence, presence of the object, presence of meaning to consciousness, self-presence in so called living speech and in self-consciousness?"^[15] It was in this trinity of works that the "principles" of deconstruction were set out, not through theoretical explication but, rather, by demonstration,^{[citation needed]} where he showed that the arguments promulgated by their subject-matter exceeded and contradicted the oppositional parameters in which they were situated. The next five years of lectures and essay-length work were gathered into two 1972 collections, Dissemination and Margins of Philosophy, at which time a collection of interviews (published as Positions in 1981) was also released. De la grammatologie is a book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, first published in 1967 by Les Éditions de Minuit. ... Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859, ProstÄ›jov – April 26, 1938, Freiburg) was a German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology. ... Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced ) (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. ... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) (pronounced ) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. ... Emmanuel Lévinas (IPA: , January 12, 1906 Kaunas, Lithuania - December 25, 1995 Paris) was a French philosopher and Talmudic commentator. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (IPA: ) (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher and, with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, one of the representatives of German idealism. ... Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Descartes redirects here. ... This article is about the anthropologist. ... André Leroi-Gourhan (August 25, 1911 - February 19, 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics. ... Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Edmond Jabes (Cairo, 1912–Paris, 1991) was a Jewish writer known for becoming of the best known literary figures to write in French after World War II. The son of a Jewish Italian family, he was raised in Egypt, where he received a classical French colonial education. ... Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (born September 4, 1896, in Marseille; died March 4, 1948 in Paris) was a French playwright, poet, actor and director. ...

1972–1980

Starting in 1972, Derrida produced on average more than a book per year. He was said to have released more work in 2003 than in any other year. He was so prolific that there is no bibliography of his work that is complete. A good start is the bibliography included in Jack Reynolds' and Jonathan Roffe's (eds.) Understanding Derrida (London and New York: Continuum, 2004).

During the 1970s, his work was arguably at its most playful and most radical: his crucial works Glas, and The Post-Card: from Socrates to Freud and Beyond set the tone for his deconstructive project, particularly by emphasizing his form of close reading, his playful treatment of words, and his effort to demonstrate the potential of deconstruction.

A further crucial set of texts from this period is collected in Limited, Inc. Derrida had written "Signature Event Context", an essay on J. L. Austin in the early 1970s; following an aggressive critique of this text by John Searle, Derrida wrote a long (and no less aggressive) defense of his earlier argument, which remains crucial to any understanding of deconstruction's involvement with language and its commonly perceived limitations. John Langshaw Austin (March 28, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. ... John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ...

Of Spirit

On March 14, 1987, Derrida presented at the CIPH conference titled "Heidegger: Open Questions" a lecture which was published in October 1987 as Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. It follows the shifting role of Geist (spirit) through Heidegger's work, noting that, in 1927, "spirit" was one of the philosophical terms that Heidegger set his sights on dismantling. But with his Nazi political engagement in 1933, Heidegger came out as a champion of the "German Spirit," and only withdrew from an exalting interpretation of the term in 1952. Derrida's book reconnects in a number of respects with his long engagement of Heidegger (such as "The Ends of Man" in Margins of Philosophy and the essays marked under the heading Geschlecht). Derrida reconsiders three other fundamental and recurring elements of Heideggerian philosophy: the distinction between human and animal, technology, and the privilege of questioning as the essence of philosophy.

Of Spirit is a crucial contribution to the long debate on Heidegger's Nazism and appeared at the same time as the French publication of a book by an unknown Chilean writer, Victor Farías, who charged that Heidegger's philosophy amounted to a wholehearted endorsement of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) faction. Derrida responded to Farías in an interview, "Heidegger, the Philosopher's Hell" and a subsequent article, "Comment donner raison? How to Concede, with Reasons?" He noted that Farías was a weak reader of Heidegger's thought, adding that much of the evidence Farías and his supporters touted as new had long been known within the philosophical community. Victor Farias is a Chilean historian, whose book Heidegger and Fascism studies the philosophy of Martin Heidegger with the conclusion that this philosophy is inherently fascist. ... The seal of SA SA propaganda poster. ...

But Of Spirit was also one of Derrida's first publications on the relationship between philosophy and nationalism, on which he had been teaching in the mid-1980s. This strand of questions would become increasingly important in his later work.

Political and ethical "turns"

Two further points deserve mention: Derrida's "political turn," heralded by Specters of Marx and Politics of Friendship in 1994, saw him divert his attention to politics. Derrida and many of his supporters have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his "political turn" can be dated to earlier essays, though the change of tone and the effort granted to political issues rose. Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International is a 1993 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. ...

Those who argue Derrida engaged in an "ethical turn" refer to works such as The Gift of Death as evidence that he began more directly applying deconstruction to the relationship between ethics and religion. In this work, Derrida reads Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Derrida's contemporary readings of Emmanuel Lévinas, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Jan Patočka, on themes such as law, justice, responsibility, and friendship, had a significant impact on fields beyond philosophy. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (IPA: , but usually Anglicized as ;  ) 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. ... Fear and Trembling Fear and Trembling (original Danish title: Frygt og Bæven) is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. ... Emmanuel Lévinas (IPA: , January 12, 1906 Kaunas, Lithuania - December 25, 1995 Paris) was a French philosopher and Talmudic commentator. ... Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 27, 1940) was a German Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. ... Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (July 11, 1888 - April 7, 1985) was a German legal theoretician and political scientist. ... Jan Patočka (June 1, 1907 - March 13, 1977) is considered one of the most important contributors to Czech philosophical phenomenology, as well as one of the most influential central European philosophers of the 20th century. ...

Derrida did not move away from readings of literature; indeed, he continued to write extensively on Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, and others. Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. ... Paul Celan Paul Celan (November 23, 1920 – approximately April 20, 1970) was the most frequently used pseudonym of Paul Antschel, one of the major poets of the post-World War II era. ...

Deconstruction

Main article: Deconstruction

The 1966 paper, in addition to establishing Derrida's international reputation, marked the start of Derrida's use of the concept of deconstruction. Although Derrida did not completely object to the characterization of his entire project with this one term, it was a development about which he remained ambivalent. Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. ...

At its core, if it can be said to have one, deconstruction is an attempt to open a text (literary, philosophical, or otherwise) to several meanings and interpretations. Its method is usually based on binary oppositions within a text — for example inside and outside or subject and object, or male and female. 'Deconstruction' then argues that such oppositions are culturally and historically defined, even reliant upon one another, and seeks to demonstrate that they are not as clear-cut or as stable as it would at first seem. On the basis that the two opposed concepts are fluid, this ambiguity is used to show that the text's meaning is fluid as well. In critical theory, a binary opposition is a pair of theoretical opposites, often organized in a hierarchy. ...

This fluidity stands against a legacy of traditional metaphysics (that is, Platonist thought) founded on oppositions, that seeks to establish a stability of meaning through conceptual absolutes where one term, for example "good," is elevated to a status that designates its opposite, in this case "evil," as its perversion, lack or inferior. These "violent hierarchies," as Derrida termed them, are taken as structurally unstable within the texts themselves, where the meaning strictly depends on this contradiction or antinomy. Plato (Left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ...

Derrida insisted that deconstruction was never performed or executed but "took place" through "memory work": in this way, the task of the "deconstructor" was to show where this oppositional or dialectical stability was ultimately subverted by the text's internal logic. Meticulous readings find philosophy anew. The result of this renewal is often to find striking interpretations of texts. No "meaning" is stable: Derrida called the "metaphysics of presence" the thing that keeps the sense of unity within a text; where presence was granted the privilege of truth. The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important consideration within the area of deconstruction. ...

To understand this argument, one may need to explore Derrida's deconstruction of the speech/writing opposition, of which Of Grammatology is perhaps the clearest study. Derrida's critique of oppositions may be partly inspired by Nietzsche's genealogical reconsideration of "good" and "evil" (see, in particular, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals). Look up good in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Evil (disambiguation). ...

Derrida's practice of reading raises the question of the relationship between deconstruction and literary theory. Within literary studies, deconstruction is often treated as a particular method of reading — in contrast to Derrida's claims that deconstruction is an "event" within a text, not a method of reading it. Despite this apparent contradiction, the literary sensibilities of Derrida cannot be ignored, as many of his deconstructions were of poems and literary texts.

Further, deconstruction's sensitivities to philosophical efforts at defining limits have been taken by some to imply a deconstructive agenda for the ultimate reversal of order. This agenda would cover: philosophy's claim to be the first of all academic disciplines; holding out hopes of uniting all; delineating what is proper to each as they remain apart; and expelling from itself non-philosophy (via judgements which irreducibly take part in violence and hinge on matters of interpretation made through language). This has been seen as the privilege of the non-serious and the literary over a humbled philosophy.

Although its influence on literary studies is probably the most well-known and well-reported effect of deconstruction, its roots are more philosophical than literary, although it is also tied to distinct but abutting academic disciplines such as linguistics, women's studies, and anthropology (called the "human sciences" in France). Derrida's examination of the latter's philosophical foundations, both conceptual and historical, and their continued reliance on philosophical argument (whether consciously or not), was an important aspect of his thought. Among his foremost influences are Edmund Husserl (just Husserl's earlier works), Martin Heidegger, and Sigmund Freud. Derrida remarked many times his debt with Husserl and Heidegger, and he said that without them he would have not said a single word.^[12] On the major influence of Heidegger, he claims in his "Letter to a Japanese Friend" (Derrida and différance, eds. Robert Bernasconi and David Wood) that the word "déconstruction" was his attempt both to translate and re-appropriate for his own ends the Heideggerian terms Destruktion and Abbau via a word from the French language, the varied senses of which seemed consistent with his requirements. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Anthropology (from Greek: ἀνθρωπος, anthropos, human being; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the study of humanity. ... Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859, ProstÄ›jov – April 26, 1938, Freiburg) was a German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology. ... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) (pronounced ) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Différance is a French neologism, homophonous with the word différence, used in the context of deconstruction. ... Robert Bernasconi is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. ... David Wood (born 1946, Oxford) is professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. ...

This relationship with the Heideggerean term was chosen over the Nietzschean term "demolition", as Derrida shared with Heidegger an interest in renovating philosophy to allow it to treat increasingly fundamental matters. In this regard, he moves beyond Heidegger in a significant way. While Heidegger passes through Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Aquinas, Aristotle, Plato, and Parmenides, and finds their work wanting where the question of Being is concerned, Derrida prefers to mine the heterogeneous nature of their works — indeed, his reading of Plato in Dissemination is among his best-known and most important readings, in which Plato's khora is treated. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813 - November 11, 1855), a 19th century Danish philosopher, has achieved general recognition as the first existentialist philosopher, though some new research shows this may be a more difficult connection than previously thought. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as one of Europes most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. ... René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ... Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - March 7, 1274) was a Catholic philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition, who gave birth to the Thomistic school of philosophy, which was long the primary philosophical approach of the Roman Catholic Church. ... This article is about the philosopher. ... PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... Parmenides of Elea (Greek: , early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Hellenic city on the southern coast of Italy. ... In ontology, a being is anything that can be said to be, either transcendantly or immanently. ... In Timaeus Plato describes khôra as a receptacle, a space, or an interval. ...

Criticisms of Derrida's work

A broad overview of the history of Derrida's reception, covering the period until the publication of Specters of Marx (1994), is given in The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation (2006). Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ...

Lack of philosophical rigour

Though Derrida addressed the American Philosophical Association on several occasions^{[citation needed]} and was highly regarded by contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty, Alexander Nehamas,^[16] and Stanley Cavell, his work has been regarded by others, such as René Thom and W. V. Quine, as pseudophilosophy or sophistry. John Searle, a frequent critic of Derrida dating back to their exchange on speech act theory in Limited Inc (where Derrida strongly accused Searle of intentionally misreading and misrepresenting him), exemplified this view in his comments on deconstruction in the New York Review of Books, February 2, 1994 [2], for example: Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 in New York City – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. ... Alexander Nehamas is a professor of philosophy and comparative literature at Princeton University. ... Stanley Cavell (born September 1, 1926) of Brookline, Massachusetts is an American philosopher. ... René Thom (September 2, 1923 - October 25, 2002) was a French mathematician and founder of the catastrophe theory. ... W. V. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Sophism was originally a term for the techniques taught by a highly respected group of philosophy and rhetoric teachers in ancient Greece. ... John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ... The notion speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. ... Limited Inc is a book by Jacques Derrida containing two essays by him. ... The New York Review of Books (or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ...

...anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial.

An instance of controversy surrounding Derrida's work and its legitimacy arose when the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate, despite opposition from members of its philosophy faculty and a letter of protest signed by eighteen professors from other institutions, including W. V. Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and René Thom. In their letter they claimed that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor" and described Derrida's philosophy as being composed of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists." The letter also stated that "Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university."^[17] The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... W. V. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. ... David Malet Armstrong, often D. M. Armstrong, (1926 - ) is an Australian philosopher of mind, and scientific metaphysician. ... Ruth Barcan Marcus (born 1921) is the philosopher and logician after whom the Barcan formula is named. ... René Thom (September 2, 1923 - October 25, 2002) was a French mathematician and founder of the catastrophe theory. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ...

Intentional obfuscation

Noam Chomsky has expressed the view that Derrida uses "pretentious rhetoric" to obscure the simplicity of his ideas.^{[citation needed]} He groups Derrida within a broader category of the Parisian intellectual community which he has criticized for, on his view, acting as an elite power structure for the well educated through "difficult writing" and obscurantism.^{[citation needed]} Chomsky has indicated that he may simply be incapable of understanding Derrida, but he is suspicious of this possibility.^{[citation needed]} Avram Noam Chomsky (Hebrew: אברם נועם חומסקי Yiddish: אברם נועם כאמסקי) (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. ... Obfuscation refers to the concept of concealing the meaning of communication by making it more confusing and harder to interpret. ... Obscurantism in its current usage can imply one of two separate concepts, sometimes distinguished by capitalization: // The older sense of the term Obscurantism refers to a class of philosophies that favor limits on the extension and dissemination of scientific knowledge, believing it to be the enemy of faith. ...

Emir Rodríguez Monegal famously derided Derrida, alleging an obfuscated recycling of the ideas of Borges (from essays and tales such as "La fruición literaria" (1928), "Elementos de preceptiva" (1933), "Pierre Menard" (1939), "Tlön" (1940), "Kafka y sus precursores" (1951)^[18]), opening his article with:^[19] Emir (28 July 1921 – 14 November 1985) was a Uruguayan scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. ... Borges redirects here. ... Borgess story Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote (Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote) originally appeared in Spanish in the Argentine journal Sur, May 1939. ... Jorge Luis Borges short story has been widely translated. ...

I've always found it difficult to read Derrida. Not so much for the density of his thought and the heavy, redundant, and repetitive style in which it is developed, but for an entirely circumstancial reason. Educated in Borges's thought from the age of fifteen, I must admit that many of Derrida's novelties struck me as being rather tautological. I could not understand why he took so long in arriving at the same luminous perspectives which Borges had opened up years earlier. His famed "deconstruction" impressed me for its technical precision and the infinite seduction of its textual sleights-of-hand, but it was all too familiar to me: I had experienced it in Borges avant la lettre.

– Emir Rodríguez Monegal, from "Borges and Derrida. Apothecaries" (translation of "Borges y Derrida: boticarios", 1985), in Borges and His Succesors. The Borgian Impact on Literature and the Arts., 1990, p. 128 Emir (28 July 1921 – 14 November 1985) was a Uruguayan scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. ...

Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in The New York Times ("Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74") and The Economist[3]. Both of these obituaries were criticised by academics supportive of Derrida; other obituaries were less critical. The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. ...

In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty argues that Derrida (especially in his book, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond) purposefully uses words that cannot be defined (e.g. Différance), and uses previously definable words in contexts diverse enough to make understanding impossible, so that the reader will never be able to contextualize Derrida's literary self. Rorty, however, argues that this intentional obfuscation is philosophically grounded. According to Rorty, this technique precludes any metaphysical accounts of Derrida's work. And since his work itself ostensibly contains no metaphysics, Derrida has consequently escaped metaphysics altogether. ^[20] Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), written by American philosopher Richard Rorty, is based on two sets of lectures given at University College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. ... Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 in New York City – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. ... Différance is a French neologism, homophonous with the word différence, used in the context of deconstruction. ...

Charges of nihilism

Some critics charge that the deconstructive project is "nihilistic". They claim Derrida's writing attempts to undermine the ethical and intellectual norms vital to the academy, if not Western civilization itself. Derrida is accused of creating a blend of extreme skepticism and solipsism that effectively denies the possibility of knowledge and meaning, which these critics believe is harmful. This article is about the philosophical position. ... Philosophical scepticism (UK spelling, scepticism) is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. ... Solipsism is the philosophical idea that My mind is the only thing that exists. Solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is an epistemological or metaphysical position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. ...

Derrida, however, felt that deconstruction was enlivening, productive, and affirmative, and that it does not "undermine" norms but rather places them within contexts that reveal their developmental and effective features.

Perhaps most persistent among these critics is Richard Wolin, who has argued that Derrida's work, as well as that of Derrida's major inspirations (e.g., Bataille, Blanchot, Lévinas, Heidegger, Nietzsche), leads to a corrosive nihilism. For example, Wolin argues that the "deconstructive gesture of overturning and reinscription ends up by threatening to efface many of the essential differences between Nazism and non-Nazism" ^[21]. When Wolin published a Derrida interview on Heidegger in the first edition of The Heidegger Controversy, Derrida argued that the interview was an intentionally malicious mistranslation, which was "demonstrably execrable" and "weak, simplistic, and compulsively aggressive". As French law requires the consent of an author to translations and this consent was not given, Derrida insisted that the interview not appear in any subsequent editions or reprints. Columbia University Press subsequently refused to offer reprints or new editions. Later editions of The Heidegger Controversy by MIT Press also omitted the Derrida interview. The matter achieved public exposure owing to a friendly review of Wolin's book by Thomas Sheehan that appeared in the New York Review of Books, in which Sheehan characterised Derrida's protests as an imposition of censorship. It was followed by an exchange of letters. [4], [5]. Derrida in turn responded, in somewhat acerbic fashion, to Sheehan and Wolin, in "The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company do Business)," which was published in the book Points.... Richard Wolin is an intellectual historian. ... Georges Bataille (September 16, 1897 _ July 9, 1962) was a French writer and philosopher, though he avoided the latter term himself. ... Maurice Blanchot (September 22, 1907_February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. ... Emmanuel Lévinas Emmanuel Lévinas (IPA: ???, January 12, 1906 Kaunas, Lithuania - December 25, 1995 Paris) was a French philosopher and Talmudic commentator. ... Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... The New York Review of Books (or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ... For other uses, see Censor. ...

Politics

Derrida engaged with many political issues, movements, and debates:

• He was initially supportive of Parisian student protesters during the May 1968 protests, but later withdrew.
• He registered his objections to the Vietnam War in delivering "The Ends of Man" in the United States.
• In 1981 he was arrested by the Czechoslovakian government upon leaving a conference in Prague that lacked government authorization, and charged with the "production and trafficking of drugs" he claimed were planted as he visited Kafka's grave. He was released (or "expelled" as the Czechoslovakian government put it) after the interventions of the Mitterrand government, returning to Paris on January 2, 1982.
• He was active in cultural activities against the Apartheid government of South Africa and on behalf of Nelson Mandela beginning in 1983.
• He met with Palestinian intellectuals during a 1988 visit to Jerusalem. He was active in the collective "89 for equality", which campaigned for the right of foreigners to vote in local elections.
• He protested against the death penalty, dedicating his seminar in his last years to the production of a non-utilitarian argument for its abolition, and was active in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
• Derrida was not known to have participated in any conventional electoral political party until 1995, when he joined a committee in support of Lionel Jospin's (by then the stepfather of Daniel, his son with Sylviane Agacinski) Socialist candidacy, although he expressed misgivings about such organizations going back to Communist organizational efforts while he was a student at ENS.
• In the 2002 French presidential election he refused to vote in the run-off between far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac, citing a lack of acceptable choices.
• While supportive of the American government in the wake of 9/11, he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq (see Rogues and his contribution to Philosophy in a Time of Terror with Giovanna Borradori and Jürgen Habermas).

Beyond these explicit political interventions, however, the political, particularly the idea of the nation, was continually central to his philosophy. Derrida noted in "The Ends of Man" (in Margins of Philosophy) that his ability to remark freely on the Vietnam War was a prerequisite to his attendance at American colloquia — an exception underscoring the national rule. He insisted on this because the democratic form (Derrida's emphasis and choice of words) of the colloquial event assumed an instability of these national identities, or rather non-identities, and because he wished to assert solidarity with those Americans opposed to the war. A May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up, with stereotypical silhouette of General de Gaulle. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Prague (disambiguation). ...   IPA: (October 26, 1916 – January 8, 1996) served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, elected as representative of the Socialist Party (PS). ... This article is about the capital of France. ... For the legal definition of apartheid, see the crime of apartheid. ... For other people named Mandela, or other uses, see Mandela. ... The term Palestinian has other usages, for which see definitions of Palestinian. ... For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. ... This article discusses utilitarian ethical theory. ... Mumia Abu-Jamal (IPA: ); (born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954[3]) is a former Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, author, and journalist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, convicted for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. ... “Political Parties” redirects here. ... Lionel Robert Jospin (born July 12, 1937 in Meudon, a suburb of Paris) is a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997-2002. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The emblem of the French Socialist Party The Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste or PS), founded in 1969, is the main opposition party in France. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ... The 2002 French presidential election consisted of a first round election on 21 April 2002, and a runoff election between the top two candidates (Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen) on 5 May 2002. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into far right. ... Jean-Marie Le Pen (born June 20, 1928, La Trinité-sur-Mer, France) is a French far-right nationalist politician, founder and president of the Front National (National Front) party. ... “Chirac” redirects here. ... A sequential look at United Flight 175 crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11—pronounced nine eleven or nine one one) consisted of a series of coordinated terrorist[1] suicide attacks upon the United States, predominantly... This article is about the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ... Giovanna Borradori is Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The term nation-state, while often used interchangeably with the terms unitary state and independent state, refers properly to the parallel occurence of a state and a nation. ...

Moreover, in his later years, Derrida amplified the political character of earlier philosophical arguments. Derrida and many of his readers have insisted that a distinct political undertone pervades his texts since the very beginning of his career. Nevertheless, the attempt to understand the political implications of notions of responsibility, reason of state, the other, decision, sovereignty, Europe, friendship, difference, faith, and so on, became much more marked from the early 1990s on. In some ways, Derrida turned the ethical thought of Emmanuel Lévinas toward a more distinctly political questioning. By 2000 theorizing "democracy to come," and thinking the limitations of existing democracies, had become important concerns. The Reason of State (Italian: Della Ragion di Stato) is a work of political philosophy by Italian Jesuit Giovanni Botero. ... “Sovereign” redirects here. ... Emmanuel Lévinas (IPA: , January 12, 1906 Kaunas, Lithuania - December 25, 1995 Paris) was a French philosopher and Talmudic commentator. ...

Derrida and his peers

Derrida's philosophical friends, allies, and students included Paul de Man, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Sarah Kofman, Hélène Cixous, Bernard Stiegler, Alexander García Düttmann, Geoffrey Bennington, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. ... Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seʁ) (October 16, 1918 – October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ... Emmanuel Levinas (January 12, 1906 - December 25, 1995) was a Jewish philosopher originally from Kaunas in Lithuania, who moved to France where he wrote most of his works in French. ... Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. ... Gilles Deleuze (IPA: ), (January 18, 1925 – November 4, 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... Jean-Luc Nancy. ... Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (born 1940) is a contemporary French philosopher, literary critic, and translator. ... Sarah Kofman (September 14, 1934 - October 15, 1994) was a French philosopher, author of numerous books, particularly on Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. ... Hélène Cixous, (born June 5, 1937), is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. ... Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24, 1942) is an Indian literary critic and theorist. ...

Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe

Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe were among Derrida's first students in France and went on to become well-known and important philosophers in their own right. Despite their considerable differences of subject, and often also of method, they continued their close interaction with each other and with Derrida, from the early 1970s. Jean-Luc Nancy. ... Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (born 1940) is a contemporary French philosopher, literary critic, and translator. ...

Derrida wrote on both of them, including a long book on Nancy: Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, 2005).

Paul de Man

Main article: Paul de Man

Derrida's most prominent friendship in intellectual life was with Paul de Man, which began with their meeting at Johns Hopkins University and continued until de Man's death in 1983. De Man provided a somewhat different approach to deconstruction, and his readings of literary and philosophical texts were crucial in the training of a generation of readers. Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ...

Shortly after de Man's death, Derrida authored a book Memoires: pour Paul de Man and in 1988 wrote an article in the journal Critical Inquiry called "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War". "Like the Sound..." became cause for controversy, because shortly before Derrida published his piece, it had been discovered that long before his academic career in the US, de Man had written almost two-hundred essays in a pro-Nazi newspaper during the German occupation of Belgium, including several that were explicitly antisemitic. Critical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed journal in the humanities published out of the University of Chicago. ...

Derrida's essay is a defense of de Man. Derrida argues, in the main, that one cannot define all of de Man's work in light of a few newspaper articles written in de Man's early twenties. Rather, any claims about de Man's work are to be considered in light of the entire body of his scholarship. The most controversial portion of the article is a relatively short section of analysis where Derrida deconstructs de Man's essays, suggesting alternative meanings to various phrases and propositions. Critics have read this section of the essay as a weak attempt to minimize the antisemitic character of de Man's writing. This "deconstruction" of de Man's work led to a flurry of responses that, along with Derrida's own reply, nearly filled a subsequent issue of Critical Inquiry. What makes this controversy more unusual is that in other contexts Derrida spoke out strongly against antisemitism and, in the 1960s, broke with the Heidegger disciple Jean Beaufret over a phrase of Beaufret's that Derrida (and, after him, Maurice Blanchot) interpreted as antisemitic. Critical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed journal in the humanities published out of the University of Chicago. ... Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Jean Beaufret (1907-1982) was a French philosopher and Germanist tremendously influential in the reception of Martin Heideggers work in France. ...

Derrida's translators

Geoffrey Bennington, Avital Ronell and Samuel Weber belong to a group of Derrida translators. Many of these are esteemed thinkers in their own right, with whom Derrida worked in a collaborative arrangement, allowing his prolific output to be translated into English in a timely fashion. Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. ... Avital Ronell is Professor and Chair of German and Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University, as well as a member of the faculty of the European Graduate School. ...

Having started as a student of de Man, Gayatri Spivak took on the translation of Of Grammatology early in her career and has since revised it into a second edition. Alan Bass was responsible for several early translations; Bennington and Peggy Kamuf have continued to produce translations of his work for nearly twenty years. In recent years, a number of translations have appeared by Michael Naas (also a Derrida scholar) and Pascale-Anne Brault. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a deconstructive literary critic and theorist of Indian extraction. ...

With Bennington, Derrida undertook the challenge published as Jacques Derrida, an arrangement in which Bennington attempted to provide a systematic explication of Derrida's work (called the "Derridabase") using the top two-thirds of every page, while Derrida was given the finished copy of every Bennington chapter and the bottom third of every page in which to show how deconstruction exceeded Bennington's account (this was called the "Circumfession"). Derrida seems to have viewed Bennington in particular as a kind of rabbinical explicator, noting at the end of the "Applied Derrida" conference, held at the University of Luton in 1995 that: "everything has been said and, as usual, Geoff Bennington has said everything before I have even opened my mouth. I have the challenge of trying to be unpredictable after him, which is impossible... so I'll try to pretend to be unpredictable after Geoff. Once again."

Relationships and mourning

Derrida's relationship with many of his contemporaries was marked by disagreements and rifts. For example, Derrida's criticism of Foucault in the essay "Cogito and the History of Madness" (from Writing and Difference), first given as a lecture which Foucault attended, caused a rift between the two men that was never fully mended. Others, like Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, found in his critical engagement with their work an invitation for further discussion. See: Léon Foucault (physicist) Foucault pendulum Michel Foucault (philosopher) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Whatever the outcome of these discussions, Derrida was often left in the unappealing position of too often having the opportunity for the last word, as he outlived many of his peers. Death and mourning are foundational to the analysis which led Derrida to his understanding of inheritance, interpretation, and responsibility. Beginning with "The Deaths of Roland Barthes" in 1981, Derrida produced a series of texts on mourning and memory occasioned by the loss of his friends and colleagues, many of them new engagements with their work. Memoires for Paul de Man, a book-length lecture series presented first at Yale and then at Irvine as Derrida's Wellek Lecture, followed in 1986, with a revision in 1989 that included "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War". Ultimately fourteen essays were collected into The Work of Mourning, which was expanded in the French edition Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde (literally, The end of the world, unique each time) to include essays dedicated to Gérard Granel and Maurice Blanchot. Gérard Granel (1930 – November 10, 2000) was a French philosopher and translator. ...

Bibliography

An extensive online bibliography can be found at this site. The compilation, copyrighted by Peter Krapp, is still in progress, but all major works are listed, sorted by title or by year of publication. See also: Jacques Derrida Bibliography. The following is a bibliography of works by Jacques Derrida. ...

Selected translations

• “Speech and Phenomena” and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
• Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) (hardcover: ISBN 0-8018-1841-9, paperback: ISBN 0-8018-1879-6, corrected edition: ISBN 0-8018-5830-5).
• Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London & New York: Routledge, 1978).
• Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
• The Archeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980).
• Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1981).
• Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981) [Paris, Minuit, 1972].
• Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1982).
• Signsponge, trans. Richard Rand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
• The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).
• Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. & Richard Rand (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
• Memoires for Paul de Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; revised edn., 1989).
• The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
• The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Ian McLeod (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1987).
• Limited Inc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988).
• Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
• Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
• Cinders, trans. Ned Lukacher (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
• Acts of Literature (New York & London: Routledge, 1992).
• Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
• The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael B. Naas (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992).
• Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
• Jacques Derrida, co-author & trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1993).
• Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
• Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York & London: Routledge, 1994).
• Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
• The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
• On the Name, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., & Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
• Points...: Interviews 1974-1994, trans. Peggy Kamuf and others, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
• Chora L Works, with Peter Eisenman (New York: Monacelli, 1997).
• Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London & New York: Verso, 1997).
• Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
• Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
• The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud, with Paule Thévenin, trans. Mary Ann Caws (Cambridge, Mass., & London: MIT Press, 1998).
• Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
• Rights of Inspection, trans. David Wills (New York: Monacelli, 1999).
• Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, with Maurice Blanchot, The Instant of My Death, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
• Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
• Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001).
• On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley & Michael Hughes (London & New York: Routledge, 2001).
• A Taste for the Secret, with Maurizio Ferraris, trans. Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity, 2001).
• The Work of Mourning, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 2001).
• Acts of Religion (New York & London: Routledge, 2002).
• Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews, with Bernard Stiegler, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
• Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, trans Peter Pericles Trifonas (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
• Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971–2001, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
• Who's Afraid of Philosophy?: Right to Philosophy 1, trans. Jan Plug (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
• Without Alibi, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
• Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, with Jürgen Habermas (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
• The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, trans. Marian Hobson (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 2003).
• Counterpath, with Catherine Malabou, trans. David Wills (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
• Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2, trans. Jan Plug (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
• For What Tomorrow...: A Dialogue, with Elisabeth Roudinesco, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
• Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
• On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
• Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
• Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Fordham University Press, 2005).
• H. C. for Life: That Is to Say..., trans. Laurent Milesi & Stefan Herbrechter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
• Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, And Genius: The Secrets of the Archive, trans. Beverly Bie Brahic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
• Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview, with Jean Birnbaum, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas (Melville House, 2007).
• Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume I (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859, Prostějov – April 26, 1938, Freiburg) was a German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology. ... De la grammatologie is a book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, first published in 1967 by Les Éditions de Minuit. ... Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24, 1942) is an Indian literary critic and theorist. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: ) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. ... Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. ... Glas is a book by Jacques Derrida published in 1974. ... Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist. ... This page is about the Classical Greek philosopher. ... Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. ... Limited Inc is a book by Jacques Derrida containing two essays by him. ... Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International is a 1993 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. ... Installation art by Peter Eisenman in the courtyard of Castelvecchio Museum in Verona, Italy, Entitled: Il giardino dei passi perduti, (The garden of the lost steps) Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932 in Newark, New Jersey) is one of the foremost practitioners of deconstructivism in American architecture. ... Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (born September 4, 1896, in Marseille; died March 4, 1948 in Paris) was a French playwright, poet, actor and director. ... Emmanuel Levinas (January 12, 1906 - December 25, 1995) was a Jewish philosopher originally from Kaunas in Lithuania, who moved to France where he wrote most of his works in French. ... Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Elisabeth Roudinesco (Born in 1944 in Paris) is a French Academic, Professor of History at University of Paris VII - Denis Diderot and Psychoanalyst. ... Jean-Luc Nancy. ... Paul Celan Paul Celan (November 23, 1920 – approximately April 20, 1970) was the most frequently used pseudonym of Paul Antschel, one of the major poets of the post-World War II era. ... Hélène Cixous, (born June 5, 1937), is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. ...

Works on Derrida

• Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political, (ISBN 0-415-10967-1)
• Geoffrey Bennington, Legislations (ISBN 0-86091-668-5)
• Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida (ISBN 0-415-22427-6)
• John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida
• Rodolphe Gasché, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida
• Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror
• Chantal Mouffe (ed.), Deconstruction and Pragmatism, with essays by Simon Critchley, Ernesto Laclau, Richard Rorty, and Derrida
• Christopher Norris, Derrida (ISBN 0-674-19823-9)
• Herman Rapaport, Later Derrida (ISBN 0-415-94269-1)
• John Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy, with essays by Rodolphe Gasché, John D. Caputo, Robert Bernasconi, David Wood, and Derrida
• Bernard Stiegler, "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (ISBN 0-521-62565-3)
• David Wood (ed.), Derrida: A Critical Reader

Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. ... Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. ... John D. Caputo John D. Caputo, American Continental philosopher. ... Rodolphe Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. ... Rodolphe Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. ... Chantal Mouffe (born 1943) is a Belgian political theorist. ... Simon Critchley is a British philosopher, working in Continental philosophy and related fields. ... Ernesto Laclau is a political theorist often described as post-marxist. ... Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 in New York City – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. ... Christopher (Charles) Norris (born November 6, 1947)[1] is a British literary critic and theorist. ... John Sallis (born 1938) is an American philosopher. ... Rodolphe Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. ... John D. Caputo John D. Caputo, American Continental philosopher. ... Robert Bernasconi is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. ... David Wood (born 1946, Oxford) is professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... David Wood (born 1946, Oxford) is professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. ...

References

1. ^ Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher, accessed August 2, 2007.
2. ^ Obituary in The Guardian, accessed August 2, 2007.
3. ^ "The Chronicle of Higher Education", July 20, 2007, accessed August 1, 2007.
4. ^ Deconstruction icon Derrida dies, accessed August 2, 2007.
5. ^ Jacques Derrida, "'Genesis' and 'Structure' and Phenomenology," in Writing and Difference (London: Routledge, 1978), paper originally delivered in 1959 at Cerisy-la-Salle, and originally published in Gandillac, Goldmann & Piaget (eds.), Genèse et structure (The Hague: Morton, 1964), p. 167:

   All these formulations have been possible thanks to the initial distinction between different irreducible types of genesis and structure: worldly genesis and transcendental genesis, empirical structure, eidetic structure, and transcendental structure. To ask oneself the following historico-semantic question: "What does the notion of genesis in general, on whose basis the Husserlian diffraction could come forth and be understood, mean, and what has it always meant? What does the notion of structure in general, on whose basis Husserl operates and operates distinctions between empirical, eidetic, and transcendental dimensions mean, and what has it always meant throughout its displacements? And what is the historico-semantic relationship between genesis and structure in general?" is not only simply to ask a prior linguistic question. It is to ask the question about the unity of the historical ground on whose basis a transcendental reduction is possible and is motivated by itself. It is to ask the question about the unity of the world from which transcendental freedom releases itself, in order to make the origin of this unity appear.

6. ^ If in 1959 Derrida was addressing this question of genesis and structure to Husserl, that is, to phenomenology, then in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (also in Writing and Difference, and see below), he addresses these same questions to Lévi-Strauss and the structuralists. This is clear from the very first line of the paper (p. 278):

   Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event," if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural—or structuralist—thought to reduce or to suspect.

   Between the two papers is staked Derrida's philosophical ground, if not indeed his step beyond or outside philosophy.
7. ^ Cf., Derrida, Positions (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 95–6:

   If the alterity of the other is posed, that is, only posed, does it not amount to the same, for example in the form of the "constituted object" or of the "informed product" invested with meaning, etc.? From this point of view, I would even say that the alterity of the other inscribes in this relationship that which in no case can be "posed." Inscription, as I would define it in this respect, is not a simple position: it is rather that by means of which every position is of itself confounded (différance): inscription, mark, text and not only thesis or theme-inscription of the thesis.

   On the phrase "default of origin" as applied to Derrida's work, cf., Bernard Stiegler, "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.) Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Stiegler understands Derrida's thinking of textuality and inscription in terms of a thinking of originary technicity, and in this context speaks of "the originary default of origin that arche-writing constitutes" (p. 239). See also Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
8. ^ On this destabilisation of both "genesis" and "structure," cf., Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 146:

   It is an opening that is structural, or the structurality of an opening. Yet each of these concepts excludes the other. It is thus as little a structure as it is an opening; it is as little static as it is genetic, as little structural as it is historical. It can be understood neither from a genetic nor from a structuralist and taxonomic point of view, nor from a combination of both points of view. Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Rodolphe Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. ...

   And note that this complexity of the origin is thus not only spatial but temporal, which is why différance is a matter not only of difference but of delay or deferral. One way in which this question is raised in relation to Husserl is thus the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of history, which Derrida raises in Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction (1962).
9. ^ Cf., Rodolphe Gasché, "Infrastructures and Systematicity," in John Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 3–4:

   One of the more persistent misunderstandings that has thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect, and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity. [...] Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the successful development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition. John Sallis (born 1938) is an American philosopher. ...

10. ^ The dissertation was eventually published in 1990 with the title Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl. English translation: The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy (2003).
11. ^ Carlo Sini (University of Milan, cattedra di Filosofia Teoretica), 2002, La Differance di Derrida, conference "La fenomenologia e il destino dell'Europa e dell'Occidente" at Vacances de l'Esprit.
12. ^ ^{a b} See interviews collected in Positions (Eng. 1981)
13. ^ Positions p. 5.
14. ^ In Positions (Eng. 1981, pp. 4-5) Derrida said "[Speech and Phenomena] is perhaps the essay which I like most. Doubtless I could have bound it as a long note to one or the other of the other two works. Of Grammatology refers to it and economizes its development. But in a classical philosophical architecture, Speech... would come first: in it is posed, at a point which appears juridically decisive for reasons that I cannot explain here, the question of the privilege of the voice and of phonetic writing in their relationship to the entire history of the West, such as this history can be represented by the history of metaphysics and metaphysics in its most modern, critical and vigilant form: Husserl's transcendental phenomenology."
15. ^ Positions [1972] p. 5.
16. ^ "Truth and Consequences: How to Understand Jacques Derrida," The New Republic 197:14 (October 5, 1987)
17. ^ Barry Smith et al., "Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University," The Times [London], May 9, 1992. [1]
18. ^ Rodríguez Monegal, Emir (1955). "Borges: Teoría y práctica: Vanidad de la crítica literaria" (Spanish). Emir Rodríguez Monegal website (from Número 27, December 1955, p. 125–157). Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy. Archived from the original on 2007-05-27.
19. ^ Rodríguez Monegal, Emir (1985). "Borges y Derrida: boticarios" (Spanish). Emir Rodríguez Monegal website (from Montevideo: Maldoror 21, 1985, p. 123–132). Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy. Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. On p. 123:

    Siempre me ha resultado difícil leer a Derrida. No tanto por la densidad de su pensamiento y el estilo moroso, redundante, repetitivo en que éste aparece desarrollado, sino por una causa completamente circunstancial. Educado en el pensamiento de Borges desde los quince años, muchas de las novedades de Derrida me han parecido algo tautológicas. No podía entender cómo tardaba tanto en llegar a las luminosas perspectivas que Borges había abierto hacía ya tantos años. La famosa "desconstrucción" me impresionaba por su rigor técnico y la infinita seducción de su espejo textual pero me era familiar: la había practicado en Borges avant la lettre. The University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano, UNIMI) is one the larger universities in Italy, with about 60,000 students, a teaching and research staff of 2,500 and a non-teaching staff of 2,000. ... Emir (28 July 1921 – 14 November 1985) was a Uruguayan scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 147th day of the year (148th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Emir (28 July 1921 – 14 November 1985) was a Uruguayan scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 290th day of the year (291st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

20. ^ Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-521-36781-6. Ch. 6: "From ironist theory to private allusions: Derrida"
21. ^ Richard Wolin, Preface to the MIT press edition: Note on a missing text. In R. Wolin(Ed.) The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1993, p xiii. ISBN 0-262-73101-0

See also

• continental philosophy
• deconstruction
• deconstruction-and-religion
• Derrida (film)
• différance
• list of deconstructionists
• logocentrism
• post-structuralism
• Semiotics

Continental philosophy is a term used in philosophy to designate one of two major traditions of modern Western philosophy. ... Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. ... Jacques Derrida Deconstruction-and-religion -- also known as weak theology and religion without religion -- is a nontheistic mode of thought that proceeds from a theological and deconstructive framework. ... Derrida is a documentary film about the philosopher Jacques Derrida made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman and released in 2002. ... Différance is a French neologism, homophonous with the word différence, used in the context of deconstruction. ... This is a list of notable thinkers that have been influenced by deconstruction. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Jacques Derrida

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Online texts and excerpts

• Excerpt from Of Grammatology
• Excerpt from Archive Fever
• "Speech and writing according to Hegel"
• Excerpt from "Spectres of Marx"
• Excerpt from "Différance"
• "Letter to a Japanese Friend"
• "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"
• Excerpt from "Signature, Event, Context"
• Excerpt from "Plato's Pharmacy"
• (French) La Différance
• (French) Signature, Événement, Context
• (French) Béliers
• (French) Fichus

Interviews

• "9/11 and Global Terrorism: A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida," excerpt from Philosophy in a Time of Terror — Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida by Giovanna Borradori
• "Excuse me, but I never said exactly so"
• Interview with Nikhil Padgaonkar
• Interview with Michael Ben-Naftali, Shoah Resource Center
• (French) Interview with Jean Birnbaum
• (French) Interview with Didier Éribon
• (French) Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy
• (French) Derrida: Artaud et ses doubles. Interview with Jean-Michel Olivier
• (French) Interview with Robert Maggiori

About

• Entry by Leonard Lawlor in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Entry by Jack Reynolds in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Derrida: Online
• All Derrida in French and Spanish
• Passings: Taking Derrida Seriously
• Jacques Derrida, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts
• Jacques Derrida, Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
• Jacques Derrida as a Philosopher of Education, Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education
• Jacques Derrida on Rhetoric and Composition: A Conversation, JAC
• Derrida's Specters of Marx and The Recognition of Pointless Identity
• Site Jacques Derrida in French
• Nietzsche y Jacques Derrida, la voluntad de ilusión y la metafora blanca, by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca
• Derrida and Dua by Ali Altaf Mian

Media

• New York Remembers Derrida video
• Derrida, Death, and Forgiveness, First Things, Journal of Religion and Public Life
• Deconstructing Jacques Derrida, Los Angeles Times Magazine
• Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction, The New York Times Magazine
• Adorno Prize page
• Jacques Derrida in Memoriam
• Jacques Derrida : The perchance of a Coming of the Otherwoman. The Deconstruction of Phallogocentrism from Duel to Duo by Carole Dely, Revue Sens Public
• Philosophy in a Time of Terror : Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida by Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, Revue Sens Public