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| − | [[Image:Of_spirit-derrida.jpg|right|frame|<center>ISBN 0226143198</center>]] | + | [[Image:Derrida200.jpg|right|frame]] |
| − | '''Jacques Derrida''' ʒak dɛʁida [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21050-2004Oct9.html Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher], accessed August 2, 2007.</ref>) ([[July 15]], [[1930]] – [[October 8]], [[2004]]) was an [[Algeria]]n-born [[France|French]] [[philosophy|philosopher]], known as the founder of [[deconstruction]]. His voluminous work has had a profound impact upon [[literary theory]] and [[continental philosophy]]. His best known work is ''[[Of Grammatology]]''.
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| − | ==Life==
| + | '''Jacques Derrida''', born Jackie Élie Derrida; July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) was a French [[philosopher]], born in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria French Algeria]. Derrida is best known for developing a form of [[semiotic]] analysis known as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction deconstruction]. He is one of the major figures associated with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism post-structuralism] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy postmodern philosophy]. |
| − | Derrida was born on [[July 15]], [[1930]], in [[El Biar|El-Biar]] (near [[Algiers]]), then [[France|French]] [[Algeria]], into a [[Sephardic]] [[Jewish]] family, the third of five children. His given name was Jackie, though he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name.<ref> [http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,11617,1324460,00.html Obituary in ''The Guardian''], accessed August 2, 2007.</ref> His youth was spent in [[El Biar|El-Biar]], Algeria. | |
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| − | On the first day of the school year in 1942, Derrida was expelled from his [[lycée]] by French administrators implementing [[antisemitism|anti-Semitic]] quotas set by the [[Vichy France|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 (soccer)|football]] competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player), Derrida read works of philosophers and writers such as [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], [[Albert Camus|Camus]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], and [[André Gide|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.
| + | During his career Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and social sciences, including—in addition to [[philosophy]] and [[literature]]—law, [[anthropology]], historiography, [[linguistics]], sociolinguistics, [[psychoanalysis]], political theory, feminism, and queer studies. His work still has a major influence in the academe of Continental Europe, South America and all other countries where [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy continental philosophy] is predominant, particularly in [[debates]] around [[ontology]], [[epistemology]] (especially concerning [[social sciences]]), [[ethics]], [[aesthetics]], [[hermeneutics]], and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_language philosophy of language]. Jacques Derrida's work also influenced architecture (in the form of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructivism deconstructivism]), music, art, and art critics. Derrida was said to "leave behind a legacy of himself as the 'originator' of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction deconstruction]." |
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| − | On his first day at the École Normale Supérieure Derrida met [[Louis Althusser]], with whom he became friends. He also became friends with [[Michel Foucault]], whose lectures he attended. After visiting the [[Husserl-Archives Leuven|Husserl Archive]] in [[Leuven]], [[Belgium]], he completed his philosophy ''[[agrégation]]'' on [[Edmund Husserl]]. 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 language|French]] and [[English language|English]] from 1957 to 1959.
| + | Particularly in his later writings, he frequently addressed [[ethical]] and [[political]] themes present in his work. These writings influenced various activists and political [[movements]]. Derrida became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious difficulty of his work made him [[controversial]]. |
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| − | 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 [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]], and from 1964 to 1984 at the [[École Normale Superieure]]. His wife Marguerite gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. Beginning with his 1966 lecture at [[Johns Hopkins University]], [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/sign-play.html "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.
| + | On multiple occasions, Derrida referred to himself as a historian. Derrida questioned assumptions of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_philosophical_tradition Western philosophical tradition] and also more broadly Western culture. By questioning the dominant [[discourses]], and trying to [[modify]] them, he attempted to democratize the [[university]] scene and to politicize it. During the American [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_1980s_culture_wars 1980s culture wars], this would attract the [[anger]] of politically conservative and right-wing intellectuals who were trying to defend the [[status quo]]. |
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| − | He completed his ''Thèse d'État'' in 1980; the work was subsequently published in English translation as "The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations." In 1983 Derrida collaborated with [[Ken McMullen (film director)|Ken McMullen]] on the film ''[[Ghost Dance (film)|Ghost Dance]]''. Derrida appears in the film as himself and also contributed to the script.
| + | Derrida called his [[challenge]] to the [[assumptions]] of Western culture "deconstruction". On some occasions, Derrida referred to deconstruction as a radicalization of a certain spirit of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism Marxism]. |
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| − | 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.
| + | Deconstruction is an attempt to [[expose]] and undermine the [[binary]] oppositions, [[hierarchies]], and [[paradoxes]] on which particular [[texts]], philosophical and otherwise, are founded. Derrida saw deconstruction as a challenge to unquestioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition. Derrida approaches all texts as constructed around binary oppositions which all [[speech]] has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This approach to text, in a broad sense, emerges from [[semiotics]] advanced by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure]. Saussure is considered one of the fathers of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism structuralism] and he posited that terms get their [[meaning]] in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language. |
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| − | [[Sylviane Agacinski]] gave birth to Derrida's third son, Daniel, in 1984. | + | Perhaps Derrida's most quoted and famous assertion, which appears in an essay on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau Rousseau] in his book ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Grammatology Of Grammatology]'' is the statement that "there is nothing outside the [[text]]" (il n'y a pas de hors-texte). Critics of Derrida have quoted it as a slogan to characterize and stigmatize deconstruction. Derrida once explained that this [[assertion]] "which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction (...) means nothing else: there is nothing outside [[context]]. In this form, which says exactly the same thing, the [[formula]] would doubtless have been less shocking." |
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| − | In 1986 Derrida 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.<ref>[http://today.uci.edu/news/uciinthenews_070716.asp "The Chronicle of Higher Education", July 20, 2007], accessed August 1, 2007.</ref> He was a regular visiting professor at several other major American universities, including [[Johns Hopkins University]], [[Yale University]], [[New York University]], and [[The New School for Social Research]]. | + | In his 1989 ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency,_Irony,_and_Solidarity Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]'', [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty Richard Rorty] argues that Derrida (especially in his book, ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Card:_From_Socrates_to_Freud_and_Beyond 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. In garbling his message Derrida is attempting to [[escape]] the [[naïve]], positive metaphysical projects of his predecessors. |
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| − | Derrida was a member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] and received the 2001 [[:De:Theodor-W.-Adorno-Preis|Adorno-Preis]] from the [[University of Frankfurt]]. He was awarded honorary doctorates by [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]], [[Columbia University]], [[The New School for Social Research]], the [[University of Essex]], [[University of Leuven]], and [[Williams College]]. | + | Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Independent. The magazine The Nation responded to the NYT obituary saying that "even though American papers had scorned and [[Trivia|trivialized]] Derrida before, the [[tone]] seemed particularly caustic for an obituary of an internationally acclaimed philosopher who had profoundly influenced two [[generations]] of American humanities scholars."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida] |
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| − | In 2002, Derrida appeared in a documentary about himself and his work, entitled ''[[Derrida (film)|Derrida]]''.
| + | [[Category: Biography]] |
| | + | [[Category: Philosophy]] |
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| − | 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]].<ref> [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3729844.stm Deconstruction icon Derrida dies], accessed August 2, 2007.</ref>
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| − | ==Work==
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| − | ===Introduction===
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| − | 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 [[phenomenology|"phenomenological"]] and [[structuralism|"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?<ref>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:
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| − | 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.
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| − | In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.<ref>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):
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| − | 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.
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| − | Between the two papers is staked Derrida's philosophical ground, if not indeed his step beyond or outside philosophy.</ref> 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.<ref>Cf., Derrida, ''Positions'' (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 95–6:
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| − | 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''.
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| − | 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).</ref> 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.<ref>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:
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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).</ref>
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| − | 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 [[aporia]]s 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.<ref>Cf., Rodolphe Gasché, "Infrastructures and Systematicity," in [[John Sallis]] (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Philosophy'' (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 3–4:
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| − | 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.
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| − | ===Early works===
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| − | 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]].<ref>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).</ref> In 1962 he published ''Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction'', which contained his own translation of Husserl's essay. Many elements of Derrida's thought were already present in this work. 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''."<ref>''Positions'' p. 5.</ref>
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| − | 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:
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| − | {{quotation|(...) 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 [[metaphor]]s and [[metonymy|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 (disambiguation)|eidos]]'', ''[[arche|archē]]'', ''[[telos]]'', ''[[energeia]]'', ''[[ousia]]'' (essence, existence, substance, subject), ''[[aletheia|alētheia]]'', [[transcendentalism|transcendentality]], [[consciousness]], [[God]], [[man]], and so forth.|"Structure, Sign and Play" in ''Writing and Difference'', p. 353}}
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| − | 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.
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| − | ===1967–1972===
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| − | Derrida's interests traversed disciplinary boundaries, and his knowledge of a wide array of diverse material was reflected in the three collections of work published in 1967: ''[[Of Grammatology]]'', ''Writing and Difference'', and ''Speech and Phenomena''.<ref>In ''Positions'' (Eng. 1981, pp. 4-5) Derrida stated, "[''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."</ref> These three books contained readings of the work of many philosophers and authors, including [[Edmund Husserl|Husserl]], linguist [[Ferdinand de Saussure|de Saussure]], [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], [[Emmanuel Lévinas|Lévinas]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Georges Bataille|Bataille]], [[René Descartes|Descartes]], anthropologist [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]], paleontologist [[André Leroi-Gourhan|Leroi-Gourhan]], psychoanalyst [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]], and writers such as [[Edmond Jabès|Jabès]] and [[Antonin Artaud|Artaud]]. Derrida frequently acknowledged his debt to Husserl and Heidegger, and stated that without them he would have not said a single word.<ref name="Positions">See interviews collected in ''Positions'' (Eng. 1981)</ref><ref>On the influence of Heidegger, Derrida claims in his "Letter to a Japanese Friend" (''Derrida and [[différance]]'', eds. [[Robert Bernasconi]] and [[David Wood (philosopher)|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. This relationship with the Heideggerian term was chosen over the Nietzschean term "demolition," as Derrida shared Heidegger's interest in renovating philosophy.</ref> Among the 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?"<ref>''Positions'' [1972] p. 5.</ref>
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| − | This collection of three books published in 1967 elaborated Derrida's theoretical framework. Derrida attempts to approach the very heart of the [[Western intellectual tradition]], characterizing this tradition as "a search for a transcendental being that serves as the origin or guarantor of meaning." The attempt to "ground the meaning relations constitutive of the world in an instance that itself lies outside all relationality" was referred to by Heidegger as "[[logocentrism]]," and Derrida argues that the philosophical enterprise is ''essentially'' logocentric<ref name="Lamont87">Lamont '87, pp. 590, 602-606 (Lamont, Michele ''[http://www.billtron.org/node/658 How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida]''. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602(198711)93%3A3%3C584%3AHTBADF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S] [[American Journal of Sociology]], Vol. 93, No. 3 [Nov., 1987]) </ref>, and that this is a [[paradigm]] inherited from [[Judaism]] and [[Hellenism]].<ref name="Borody98"/> He in turn describes logocentrism as phallocratic, [[patriarchal]] and [[masculinist]].<ref name="Borody98"/><ref>[[Hélène Cixous]], [[Catherine Clément]] [1975] ''La jeune née''</ref>
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| − | Derrida contributed to "the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in [[Western culture]]"<ref name="Borody98">[http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/wayneb/ Wayne A. Borody] (1998) pp. 3, 5 ''[http://kenstange.com/nebula/feat013/feat013.html Figuring the Phallogocentric Argument with Respect to the Classical Greek Philosophical Tradition]'' [http://kenstange.com/nebula/ Nebula: A Netzine of the Arts and Science], Vol. 13 (pp. 1-27).</ref>, arguing that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as [[sacred/profane]], [[sign/signifier]], [[mind/body]]), and that any text contains implicit hierarchies, "by which an order is imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised, as these hierarchies exclude, subordinate, and hide the various potential meanings."<ref name="Lamont87"/> Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as [[deconstruction]].
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| − | The next five years of lectures and essay-length work were gathered into two 1972 collections, ''Dissemination'' and ''Margins of Philosophy'', and in the same year a collection of interviews, entitled ''Positions'', was also published.
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| − | ===1972–1980===
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| − | Starting in 1972, Derrida produced on average more than a book per year. Derrida continued to produce important works, such as ''Glas'' and ''The Post-Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond''.
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| − | A sequence of encounters with [[analytical philosophy]] is collected in ''Limited, Inc''. Derrida wrote "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.
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| − | Starting from 1972, Derrida received increasing recognition among scholars in the United States, more in the field of Literary Criticism than Philosophy.<ref name="Lamont87"/><ref>Sven Ove Hansson ''[http://www.infra.kth.se/phil/theoria/editorial721.htm Philosophical Schools]'' - Editorial From Theoria'' vol. 72, Part 1 (2006).</ref>
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| − | ===''Of Spirit''===
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| − | 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.
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| − | ''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 [[Chile]]an writer, [[Victor Farias|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.
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| − |
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| − | 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.
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| − |
| |
| − | ===Political and ethical "turns"===
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| − | Some have argued that Derrida's work took a "political turn" around 1994, heralded by the publication of ''[[Specters of Marx]]'' and ''Politics of Friendship''. Others, however, including Derrida himself, have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his "political turn" can be dated to earlier essays.
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| − |
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| − | 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 interprets passages from the [[Bible]], particularly on [[Abraham]] and the [[Binding of Isaac|Sacrifice of Isaac]],<ref>Jack Reynolds, Jonathan Roffe (2004) ''[http://books.google.it/books?id=D7jq50nVzGAC Understanding Derrida]'' p.49 </ref><ref>''Gift of Death'', pp. 57-72</ref> and from [[Søren Kierkegaard|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. Derrida delivered a eulogy at Lévinas' funeral, later published as ''Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas'', an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy. Here, Derrida followed [[Bracha L. Ettinger]]'s interpretation of Lévinas' notion of femininity and transformed his own earlier reading of this subject accordingly.<ref>B. L. Ettinger in conversation with Emmanuel Lévinas,''"Que dirait Eurydice?"/ "What would Eurydice Say?"'' (1991-93). Reprinted to coincide with Kabinet exhibition at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Paris: BLE Atelier, 1997. This is a reprint of ''Le féminin est cette différence inouïe'' (Livre d'artiste, 1994) and it includes the text of ''Time is the Breath of the Spirit'', MOMA, Oxford, 1993. Reprinted in ''Athena: Philosophical Studies''. Vol. 2, 2006.</ref>
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| − |
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| − | Derrida did not move away from readings of literature; indeed, he continued to write extensively on [[Maurice Blanchot]], [[Paul Celan]], and others.
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| − |
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| − | ==Criticisms of Derrida's work==
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| − | {{POV-section|date=December 2007}}
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| − |
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| − | 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).
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| − |
| |
| − | ===Lack of philosophical clarity===
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| − | Though Derrida addressed the American Philosophical Association on several occasions{{Fact|date=June 2007}} and was highly regarded by contemporary philosophers like [[Richard Rorty]], [[Alexander Nehamas]],<ref>"Truth and Consequences: How to Understand Jacques Derrida," The New Republic 197:14 (October 5, 1987)</ref> and [[Stanley Cavell]], his work has been regarded by other Anglophone philosophers, such as [[John Searle]] 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 [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5964], for example:
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| − |
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| − | {{quotation|...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.}}
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| − |
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| − | A controversy surrounding Derrida's work in philosophy and as a philosopher 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 Malet Armstrong|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 [[Dada]]ists." 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."<ref>Barry Smith et al., "Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University," ''The Times'' [London], May 9, 1992. [http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/againstdsdegree.htm]</ref>
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| − |
| |
| − | ===Intentional obfuscation===
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| − | [[Noam Chomsky]] has expressed the view that Derrida uses "pretentious rhetoric" to obscure the simplicity of his ideas.<ref name=zmag>{{cite journal|url=http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1995----02.htm|year=1995|title=Rationality/Science|
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| − | journal=Z Papers Special Issue|first=Noam|last=Chomsky|quote=I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count.}}</ref> 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 "[[obfuscation|difficult writing]]" and [[obscurantism]].<ref name=zmag/> Chomsky has indicated that he may simply be incapable of understanding Derrida, but he is suspicious of this possibility.<ref name=zmag/>
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| − |
| |
| − | [[Emir Rodríguez Monegal]] famously derided Derrida, alleging an obfuscated recycling of the ideas of [[Jorge Luis Borges|Borges]] (from essays and tales such as "La fruición literaria" (1928), "Elementos de preceptiva" (1933), "[[Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote|Pierre Menard]]" (1939), "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius|Tlön]]" (1940), "Kafka y sus precursores" (1951)<REF
| |
| − | >
| |
| − | {{Cite web
| |
| − | | author = [[Emir Rodríguez Monegal|Rodríguez Monegal, Emir]]
| |
| − | | date= 1955
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| − | | title = "Borges: Teoría y práctica: Vanidad de la crítica literaria"
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| − | | language = [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
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| − | | work = Emir Rodríguez Monegal website
| |
| − | | pages = (from ''Número'' 27, December 1955, p. 125–157)
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| − | | publisher = Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy
| |
| − | | url = http://www.archivodeprensa.edu.uy/r_monegal/bibliografia/prensa/artpren/numero/num_271.htm
| |
| − | | archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070527144227/http://www.archivodeprensa.edu.uy/r_monegal/bibliografia/prensa/artpren/numero/num_271.htm
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| − | | archivedate = 2007-05-27
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| − | }}
| |
| − | </REF>), opening his article with:<REF
| |
| − | >
| |
| − | {{Cite web
| |
| − | | author = [[Emir Rodríguez Monegal|Rodríguez Monegal, Emir]]
| |
| − | | date= 1985
| |
| − | | title = "Borges y Derrida: boticarios"
| |
| − | | language = [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| |
| − | | work = Emir Rodríguez Monegal website
| |
| − | | pages = (from Montevideo: ''Maldoror'' 21, 1985, p. 123–132)
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| − | | publisher = Archivo de Prensa.edu.uy
| |
| − | | url = http://www.archivodeprensa.edu.uy/r_monegal/bibliografia/criticas/crit_06.htm
| |
| − | | archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20071017012431/http://www.archivodeprensa.edu.uy/r_monegal/bibliografia/criticas/crit_06.htm
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| − | | archivedate = 2007-10-17
| |
| − | }} On p. 123:
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| − | {{Quotation|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''.
| |
| − | }}
| |
| − | </REF>
| |
| − | {{Quotation|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 circumstantial 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
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| − | }}
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| − |
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| − | Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in ''[[The New York Times]]'' ("[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/10derrida.html?ex=1255147200&en=bc84f1b2c5f092c5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74]") and ''[[The Economist]]''[http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3308320]. Both of these obituaries were criticised by academics supportive of Derrida; other obituaries were less critical.
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| − |
| |
| − | 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.
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| − | <ref name=a>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" </ref>
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| − |
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| − | ===Charges of nihilism===
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| − | Some critics charge that the deconstructive project is "[[nihilism|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 [[Philosophical skepticism|skepticism]] and [[solipsism]] that effectively denies the possibility of knowledge and meaning, which these critics believe is harmful.
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| − |
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| − | 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.
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| − |
| |
| − | 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" <ref> 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 </ref>. 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. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2658], [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2591]. 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...''.
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| − |
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| − | ==Politics==
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| − | Derrida engaged with many political issues, movements, and debates:
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| − | * He was initially supportive of Parisian student protesters during the [[May 1968]] protests, but later withdrew.
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| − | * He registered his objections to the [[Vietnam War]] in delivering "The Ends of Man" in the United States.
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| − | * In 1981 he was arrested by the [[Czechoslovakia]]n 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 [[François Mitterrand|Mitterrand]] government, returning to [[Paris]] on January 2, 1982.
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| − | * He was active in cultural activities against the [[History of South Africa in the apartheid era|Apartheid government of South Africa]] and on behalf of [[Nelson Mandela]] beginning in 1983.
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| − | * 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.
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| − | * He protested against the [[death penalty]], dedicating his seminar in his last years to the production of a non-[[utilitarianism|utilitarian]] argument for its abolition, and was active in the campaign to free [[Mumia Abu-Jamal]].
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| − | * 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|Lionel Jospin's]] (by then the stepfather of Daniel, his son with [[Sylviane Agacinski]]) [[French Socialist Party|Socialist]] candidacy, although he expressed misgivings about such organizations going back to [[French Communist Party|Communist]] organizational efforts while he was a student at ENS.
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| − | * In the [[French presidential election, 2002|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.
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| − | * While supportive of the American government in the wake of [[September 11, 2001 attacks|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]]).
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| − |
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| − | Beyond these explicit political interventions, however, Derrida was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself, within and beyond philosophy. Derrida 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. By 2000, theorizing "democracy to come," and thinking the limitations of existing democracies, had become important concerns.
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| − |
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| − | ==Derrida and his peers==
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| − | 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]].
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| − |
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| − | ===Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe===
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| − | [[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.
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| − |
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| − | Derrida wrote on both of them, including a long book on Nancy: ''Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy'' (''On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy'', 2005).
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| − |
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| − | ===Paul de Man===
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| − | {{main|Paul de Man}}
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| − |
| |
| − | 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.
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| − |
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| − | 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 by the Belgian literary critic [[Ortwin de Graef]] 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.
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| − |
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| − | 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.
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| − |
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| − | ===Derrida's translators===
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| − | [[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.
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| − |
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| − | 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.
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| − |
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| − | 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."
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| − |
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| − | ===Relationships and mourning===
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| − | 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.
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| − |
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| − | 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.
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| − |
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| − | ==References==
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| − | {{reflist}}
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| − |
| |
| − | ==Bibliography==
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| − | An extensive online bibliography can be found [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/jdind.html at this site]. The compilation, copyrighted by Peter Krapp, is still in progress, but all major works are listed, sorted [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/jdalf.html by title] or [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/jdyr.html by year of publication].
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| − | See also: [[Jacques Derrida Bibliography]].
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| − |
| |
| − | ===Selected translations===
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| − | * [1967] ''[[Speech and Phenomena|“Speech and Phenomena” and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs]]'', trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
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| − | * [1967] ''[[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).[http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/derrida.htm]
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| − | * [1967] ''[[Writing and Difference]]'', trans. Alan Bass (London & New York: Routledge, 1978).
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| − | * [1972] ''[[Positions (book)|Positions]]'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981) [Paris, Minuit, 1972].
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| − | * ''[[Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles]]'', trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
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| − | * ''[[The Archeology of the Frivolous|The Archeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac]]'', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980).
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| − | * ''[[Dissemination]]'', trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1981).
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| − | * ''[[Margins of Philosophy]]'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1982).
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| − | * ''[[Signsponge]]'', trans. Richard Rand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
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| − | * ''[[The Ear of the Other]]'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).
| |
| − | * ''[[Glas (book)|Glas]]'', trans. [[John P. Leavey, Jr.]] & Richard Rand (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
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| − | * ''[[Memoires for Paul de Man]]'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; revised edn., 1989).
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| − | * ''[[The Post Card (book)|The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond]]'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
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| − | * ''[[The Truth in Painting]]'', trans. [[Geoffrey Bennington]] & Ian McLeod (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1987).
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| − | * ''[[Limited Inc]]'' (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988).
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| − | * ''[[Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction]]'', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
| |
| − | * ''[[Of Spirit|Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question]]'', trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
| |
| − | * ''[[Cinders (book)|Cinders]]'', trans. Ned Lukacher (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
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| − | * ''[[Acts of Literature]]'' (New York & London: Routledge, 1992).
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| − | * ''[[Given Time|Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money]]'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
| |
| − | * ''[[The Other Heading|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 (book)|Jacques Derrida]]'', co-author & trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1993).
| |
| − | * ''[[Memoirs of the Blind|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|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|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 [[:It:Maurizio Ferraris|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|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|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|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|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).
| |
| − | * ''[[Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume II]]'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
| |
| − | * ''[[The Animal That Therefore I Am]]'', trans. David Wills (Fordham University Press, 2008).
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ===Works on Derrida===
| |
| − | '''Introductory works'''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | *Culler, Jonathan (1975) ''Structuralist Poetics''.
| |
| − | *Descombes, Vincent (1980) ''Modern French Philosophy''.
| |
| − | *[[Fredric Jameson|Jameson, Fredric]] (1972) ''The Prison-House of Language''.
| |
| − | *Leitch, Vincent B. (1983) ''Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction''.
| |
| − | *Lentricchia, Frank (1980) ''After the New Criticism''.
| |
| − | *Norris, Christopher (1982) ''Deconstruction: Theory and Practice''.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Other works'''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | *Beardsworth, Richard, ''Derrida and the Political'' (ISBN 0-415-10967-1).
| |
| − | *[[Geoffrey Bennington|Bennington, Geoffrey]], ''Legislations'' (ISBN 0-86091-668-5).
| |
| − | *Bennington, Geoffrey, ''Interrupting Derrida'' (ISBN 0-415-22427-6).
| |
| − | *[[John D. Caputo|Caputo, John D.]], ''The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida''.
| |
| − | *Caputo, John D. (ed.) ''Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida''.
| |
| − | *[[Rodolphe Gasché|Gasché, Rodolphe]], ''Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida''.
| |
| − | *Gasché, Rodolphe, ''The Tain of the Mirror''.
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| − | *[[Chantal Mouffe|Mouffe, Chantal]] (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Pragmatism'', with essays by [[Simon Critchley]], [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[Richard Rorty]], and Derrida.
| |
| − | *[[Christopher Norris (critic)|Norris, Christopher]], ''Derrida'' (ISBN 0-674-19823-9).
| |
| − | *Rapaport, Herman, ''Later Derrida'' (ISBN 0-415-94269-1).
| |
| − | *[[John Sallis|Sallis, John]] (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Philosophy'', with essays by Rodolphe Gasché, John D. Caputo, [[Robert Bernasconi]], [[David Wood (philosopher)|David Wood]], and Derrida.
| |
| − | *[[James K. A. Smith|Smith, James K. A.]], ''Jacques Derrida: Live Theory''.
| |
| − | *[[Bernard Stiegler|Stiegler, Bernard]], "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 (philosopher)|Wood, David]] (ed.), ''Derrida: A Critical Reader''.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ==See also==
| |
| − | * [[continental philosophy]]
| |
| − | * [[deconstruction]]
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| − | * [[deconstruction-and-religion]]
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| − | * [[différance]]
| |
| − | * [[grammatology]]
| |
| − | * [[list of deconstructionists]]
| |
| − | * [[logocentrism]]
| |
| − | * [[post-structuralism]]
| |
| − | * [[sous rature]]
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| − |
| |
| − | ==External links==
| |
| − | {{wikiquote}}
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ===Online texts and excerpts===
| |
| − | * [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/derrida.htm Excerpt from ''Of Grammatology'']
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/arch.html Excerpt from ''Archive Fever'']
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/hegel.html "Speech and writing according to Hegel"]
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/spectres.html Excerpt from "Spectres of Marx"]
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/diff.html Excerpt from "Différance"]
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| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/letter.html "Letter to a Japanese Friend"]
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| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/sign-play.html "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"]
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/sec.html Excerpt from "Signature, Event, Context"]
| |
| − | * [http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/pharma.htm Excerpt from "Plato's Pharmacy"]
| |
| − | * [http://www.sup.org/pages.cgi?isbn=0804757674&item=Chapter_1_pages&page=1 Excerpt from "Psyche"]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/differance.htm La Différance]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/signature.htm Signature, Événement, Context]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/beliers.htm Béliers]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/benjamin_adorno.htm Fichus]
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ===Interviews===
| |
| − | * [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/066649.html "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]
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/so.html "Excuse me, but I never said exactly so"]
| |
| − | * [http://www.csun.edu/coms/grad/jd.nik.html Interview with Nikhil Padgaonkar]
| |
| − | * [http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203851.pdf Interview with Michael Ben-Naftali, Shoah Resource Center]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/lemonde.htm Interview with Jean Birnbaum]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/heidegger.htm Interview with Didier Éribon]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/derrida_manger.htm Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/olivier.html ''Derrida: Artaud et ses doubles.'' Interview with Jean-Michel Olivier]
| |
| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/ami.html Interview with Robert Maggiori]
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ===About===
| |
| − | * [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/ Entry by Leonard Lawlor in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
| |
| − | * [http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/derrida.htm Entry by Jack Reynolds in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
| |
| − | * [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/ Derrida: Online]
| |
| − | * [http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/ All Derrida in French and Spanish]
| |
| − | * [http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_1/derrida.htm Passings: Taking Derrida Seriously]
| |
| − | * [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/ ''Jacques Derrida'', Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts]
| |
| − | * [http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/jacques_derrida.html ''Jacques Derrida'', Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory]
| |
| − | * [http://www.vusst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/derrida-education.htm ''Jacques Derrida as a Philosopher of Education'', Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education]
| |
| − | * [http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/10/Articles/1.htm ''Jacques Derrida on Rhetoric and Composition: A Conversation'', JAC]
| |
| − | * [http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=2&page_id=71 Derrida's Specters of Marx and The Recognition of Pointless Identity]
| |
| − | * [http://www.derrida.ws ''Site Jacques Derrida'' in French]
| |
| − | * [http://www.konvergencias.net/vasquezrocca129.htm Nietzsche y Jacques Derrida, la voluntad de ilusión y la metafora blanca, by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca]
| |
| − | *[http://www.alashrafia.com/english/derrida_dua.html Derrida and Dua by Ali Altaf Mian]
| |
| − | *[http://www.germanlawjournal.com/past_issues_archive.php?show=1&volume=6 German Law Journal Special Issue on Jacques Derrida]
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ===Media===
| |
| − | * [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4918450564764113529&q=derrida&pl=true New York Remembers Derrida video]
| |
| − | * [http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9703/opinion/mckenna.html ''Derrida, Death, and Forgiveness'', First Things, Journal of Religion and Public Life]
| |
| − | * [http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20LAT%20page.htm ''Deconstructing Jacques Derrida'', Los Angeles Times Magazine]
| |
| − | * [http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20NYT%20-%20page.htm ''Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction'', The New York Times Magazine]
| |
| − | * [http://www.atelierleonhardt.de/derrida.htm Adorno Prize page]
| |
| − | * [http://www.humanities.uci.edu/remembering_jd/ Jacques Derrida in Memoriam]
| |
| − | * [http://www.sens-public.org/article.php3?id_article=312 ''Jacques Derrida : The perchance of a Coming of the Otherwoman. The Deconstruction of Phallogocentrism from Duel to Duo'' by Carole Dely (tr. Wilson Baldridge), International Web Journal ''Sens Public'']
| |
| − | * [http://www.sens-public.org/article.php3?id_article=102 ''Philosophy in a Time of Terror : Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida'' by Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, International Web Journal ''Sens Public'']
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| | [[Category: Philosophy]] | | [[Category: Philosophy]] |
| | [[Category: Languages and Literature]] | | [[Category: Languages and Literature]] |
