Jacques Derrida
{{redirect|Derrida|the documentary film|Derrida (film)}}
2004 | 8 | 07|15}}|school_tradition = Deconstruction|main_interests = Philosophy of language{{·}} Literary theory{{·}} Ethics{{·}} Ontology|notable_ideas = Deconstruction{{·}} Différance{{·}} Phallogocentrism | Kierkegaard{{·}} Maurice Blanchot>Blanchot{{·}} Michel Foucault | {{·}} Martin Heidegger>Heidegger{{·}} Roland Barthes | {{·}} Georges Bataille>Bataille{{·}}Edmund Husserl | {{·}} Emmanuel Lévinas>Lévinas{{·}} Friedrich Nietzsche | {{·}} Ferdinand de Saussure>Saussure{{·}} Sigmund Freud | {{·}} Karl Marx>Marx{{·}} Levi-Strauss | Michel Foucault>Foucault{{·}} Paul de Man | {{·}} Bernard Stiegler>Stiegler{{·}} Jean-Luc Nancy | {{·}} Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe>Lacoue-Labarthe{{·}} Ernesto Laclau | {{·}} Judith Butler>Butler{{·}} Peter Eisenman | {{·}} Edward Said>Said{{·}} Homi K. Bhabha | {{·}} Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak>Spivak{{·}} John Caputo | {{·}} Simon Critchley>Critchley}} | Jacques Derrida ({{pronounced|ʒak dɛʁida}}
(1)) (
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
literary theory and
continental philosophy. His best known work is
Of Grammatology.
Life
Derrida was born on
July 15,
1930, in El-Biar (near
Algiers), then
French Algeria, into a
Sephardic Jewish family, the third of five children. His parents named him Jackie, supposedly after a Hollywood actor, though he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris.
(2) His youth was spent in El-Biar, Algeria. 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.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 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 the psychoanalyst 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.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. 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.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 on the film
Ghost Dance. Derrida appears in the film as himself and also contributed to the script.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. 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.
(3) 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.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
Cambridge University,
Columbia University,
The New School for Social Research, the
University of Essex,
University of Leuven,
Williams College and
University of Silesia. A number of academics from
Cambridge University tried to stop the granting of the degree, but were out-numbered when it was put to a vote.
(4) In 2002, Derrida appeared in a documentary about himself and his work, entitled
Derrida.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.
(5)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?
(6)In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.
(7) 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.
(8) 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.
(9)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.
(10)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.
(11) 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."
(12)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:{{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
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.|"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.
1967–1972
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.
(13) 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
Jabès and
Artaud. Derrida frequently acknowledged his debt to Husserl and Heidegger, and stated that without them he would have not said a single word.
(14)(15) 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?"
(16)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
(17), and that this is a
paradigm inherited from
Judaism and
Hellenism.
(18)Derrida contributed to "the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in
Western culture"
(19), 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."
(20)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 an important 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.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.
1990s: political and ethical themes
Some have argued that Derrida's work took a "political turn" in the 1990s. Texts cited as evidence of such a turn include "Force of Law" (1990), as well as
Specters of Marx (1994) and
Politics of Friendship (1994). Others, however, including Derrida himself, have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his "political turn" can be dated to earlier essays.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
Sacrifice of Isaac,
(21)(22) and from
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. Derrida did not move away from readings of literature; indeed, he continued to write extensively on
Maurice Blanchot,
Paul Celan, and others.
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). His work is criticized for his alleged misuse of scientific terms and concepts in
Higher Superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science (1998).
Lack of philosophical clarity
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,
(23) and
Stanley Cavell, his work has been regarded by other Analytic 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
weblink, for example:{{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.}}
Foucault who is often considered as Derrida's contemporary, also revealed his dissatisfaction of Derrida's style of writing in a conversation with Searle. According to Foucault, Derrida practises the method of
obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of
obscurantism)
(24). Searle quotes Foucault's explanation of the term as the following:{{quotation| He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, "You didn't understand me; you're an idiot." That's the terrorism part.}}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 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."
(25)Intentional obfuscation
Noam Chomsky has expressed the view that Derrida uses "pretentious rhetoric" to obscure the simplicity of his ideas.
(26) He groups Derrida within a broader category of the Parisian intellectual community which he has criticized for, in his view, acting as an elite power structure for the well educated through "
difficult writing" and
obscurantism.
[ Chomsky has indicated that he may simply be incapable of understanding Derrida, but he is suspicious of this possibility.][Emir Rodríguez Monegal alleged that many of Derrida's ideas were recycled from the work 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)][
] 
