View source for Jacques Derrida

{{short description|French philosopher (1930–2004)}}
{{Redirect|Derrida}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2022}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| image = Jacques_derrida_pardonner_limpardonnable_et_limprescriptible_22.jpg
| name = Jacques Derrida
| region = [[Western philosophy]]
| era = [[20th-century philosophy]]|
| birth_name = Jackie Élie Derrida
|birth_date = {{Birth date |1930|07|15|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[El Biar]], [[French Algeria]]
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2004|10|09|1930|07|15|df=y}}
| death_place = Paris, France
| spouse = {{marriage|[[Marguerite Aucouturier]]|1957}}
| children = 3, including [[Pierre Alféri]]
| education =[[École Normale Supérieure]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]], [[Master of Arts|MA]], [[Doctoral candidate|Dr. cand.]])<br />[[Harvard University]]<br />[[University of Paris]] ([[Doctorat d'État|DrE]])
| institutions = {{unbulleted list | [[University of Paris VIII]] | École Normale Supérieure | [[École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]] | [[Collège international de philosophie]] | [[European Graduate School]] | [[University of California, Irvine]]}}
| school_tradition = {{unbulleted list | [[Continental philosophy]] | [[Post-structuralism]] (disavowed) | [[Deconstruction]] | [[Radical hermeneutics]]<ref>[[John D. Caputo]], ''Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project'', {{OCLC|729013297}}, Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 5: "Derrida is the turning point for radical hermeneutics, the point where hermeneutics is pushed to the brink. Radical hermeneutics situates itself in the space which is opened up by the exchange between Heidegger and Derrida..."</ref>}}
| notable_ideas = {{hlist | [[Deconstruction]] | [[différance]] | [[phallogocentrism]] | [[free play (Derrida)|free play]] | [[arche-writing]] | [[metaphysics of presence]] | [[Invagination (philosophy)|invagination]] | [[pharmakon (philosophy)|pharmakon]] | [[trace (deconstruction)|trace]] | [[hauntology]] | ''[[sous rature]]'' | ''[[khôra]]'' | [[Citationality]]}}
| doctoral_advisor  = [[Maurice de Gandillac]]
| academic_advisors = [[Jean Hyppolite]]
| doctoral_students = [[Bernard Stiegler]]
| notable_students = {{hlist|[[Jean-Luc Marion]]<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Horner
 | first = Robyn
 | title = Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-Logical Introduction
 | publisher = Ashgate
 | date = 2005
 | location = Burlington
 | page = 3
}}</ref> | [[Francis Fukuyama]]<ref>{{cite news |title=History's pallbearer |first=Nicholas |last=Wroe |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/11/academicexperts.artsandhumanities |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=May 11, 2002 |access-date=Mar 17, 2011}}</ref>
}}
}}
'''Jacques Derrida''' ({{IPAc-en|d|ɛr|ɪ|'|d|ɑː}};<ref>{{Cite Dictionary.com|Derrida}}</ref> {{IPA|fr|ʒak dɛʁida|lang}}; born '''Jackie Élie Derrida''';<ref name="Jackie">Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13.{{blockquote|Jackie was born at daybreak, on 15 July 1930, at El Biar, in the hilly suburbs of Algiers, in a holiday home. [...] The boy's main forename was probably chosen because of Jackie Coogan ... When he was circumcised, he was given a second forename, Elie, which was not entered on his birth certificate, unlike the equivalent names of his brother and sister.}} See also {{cite book|title=Jacques Derrida |last=Bennington |first=Geoffrey |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=1993 |page=325}}{{blockquote|1930 Birth of Jackie Derrida, July 15, in El-Biar (near Algiers, in a holiday house).}}</ref> 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of [[deconstruction]], which he utilized in a number of his texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] and [[Edmund Husserl|Husserlian]] and [[Martin Heidegger|Heideggerian]] [[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]].<ref name="Britannica">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Jacques Derrida |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/158661/Jacques-Derrida |access-date=19 May 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Derrida on Religion: Thinker of Differance By Dawne McCance |publisher=Equinox |page=7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Derrida, Deconstruction, and the Politics of Pedagogy (Counterpoints Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) |publisher=Peter Lang Publishing Inc|page=134}} {{OCLC|314727596|476972726|263497930|783449163}}</ref> He is one of the major figures associated with [[post-structuralism]] and [[postmodern philosophy]]<ref name="Bensmaia05"/><ref name="Poster88"/><ref name="Leitch96">Vincent B. Leitch ''Postmodernism: Local Effects, Global Flows'', SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 27.</ref> although he [[Deconstruction#Not post-structuralist|distanced himself from post-structuralism]] and disavowed the word "postmodernity".<ref>''Augustine and Postmodernism'', in response to George Heffernan of [[Merrimack College]]. Indiana University Press ISBN 0-253-34507-3 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21731-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) page 42:{{blockquote|If I missed, and I probably missed a number of things in your intervention, if I missed something essential please forgive me. First, I would protest against the word postmodernity. I never used this word. I’m not responsible for the use of this word here or anywhere else ...}}</ref>

During his career, Derrida published over 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He has had a significant influence on the [[humanities]] and [[social science]]s, including philosophy, literature, [[Jurisprudence|law]],<ref name="Derrida 1992pp3-67">{{cite book |last1=Derrida |first1=Jacques |title=Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice |publisher=Routledge |year=1992 |isbn=978-0810103979 |editor1=Drucilla Cornell |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=3–67 |translator=Mary Quaintance |chapter=Force of Law |editor2=Michael Rosenfeld |editor3=Carlson |editor-first3=David Gray |editor-link3=David Gray Carlson |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2qdBeWFUmJQC}}{{blockquote|A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process (...) deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision.}}</ref><ref>
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/critical2.htm "Critical Legal Studies Movement"] in "The Bridge"
</ref><ref>[http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=13&vol=6&no=1 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL, SPECIAL ISSUE: A DEDICATION TO JACQUES DERRIDA] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130516144840/http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=13&vol=6&no=1 |date=16 May 2013}}, Vol. 6 No. 1, 1–243, 1 January 2005.</ref> [[anthropology]],<ref>"Legacies of Derrida: Anthropology", Rosalind C. Morris, ''Annual Review of Anthropology'', Volume: 36, pp. 355–389, 2007.
</ref> [[historiography]],<ref>"Deconstructing History", published 1997 (2nd. edn. Routledge, 2006).</ref> [[applied linguistics]],<ref name="Busch 2012">{{Cite journal| last1=Busch| first1=Brigitt| title=Linguistic Repertoire Revisited| journal=Applied Linguistics| volume=33| issue=5| pages=503–523| year=2012| doi=10.1093/applin/ams056}}</ref> [[sociolinguistics]],<ref>"The sociolinguistics of schooling: the relevance of Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin", Michael Evans, 01/2012; {{ISBN|978-3-0343-1009-3}}. In Edith Esch and Martin Solly (eds.), ''The Sociolinguistics of Language Education in International Contexts'', Peter Lang, pp. 31–46.</ref> [[psychoanalysis]],<ref>{{cite book |author=Earlie, Paul |title=Derrida and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-19-886927-6 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780198869276.001.0001}}</ref> [[Hauntology (music)|music]], architecture, and [[political theory]].

Into the 2000s, his work retained major academic influence throughout the United States,<ref name=nyt20041010>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/jacques-derrida-abstruse-theorist-dies-at-74.html|title = Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74|newspaper = The New York Times|date = 10 October 2004|last1 = Kandell|first1 = Jonathan}}</ref> [[continental Europe]], South America and all other countries where [[continental philosophy]] has been predominant, particularly in debates around [[ontology]], [[epistemology]] (especially concerning [[social sciences]]), ethics, [[aesthetics]], [[hermeneutics]], and the [[philosophy of language]]. For the last two decades of his life, Derrida was Professor in Humanities at the [[University of California, Irvine]]. In most of the [[Anglosphere]], where [[analytic philosophy]] is dominant, Derrida's influence is most presently felt in [[literary studies]] due to his longstanding interest in language and his association with prominent literary critics. He also influenced architecture (in the form of [[deconstructivism]]), music<ref>"Deconstruction in Music – The Jacques Derrida", Gerd Zacher Encounter, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2002.</ref> (especially in the musical atmosphere of [[Hauntology (music)|hauntology]]), art,<ref name=salcedo2004>E.g., "Doris Salcedo", Phaidon (2004), "Hans Haacke", Phaidon (2000).</ref> and [[art criticism]].<ref name=foster1996>E.g. "The return of the real", Hal Foster, October – MIT Press (1996); "Kant after Duchamp", Thierry de Duve, October – MIT Press (1996); "Neo-Avantgarde and Cultural Industry – Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975", Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, October – MIT Press (2000); "Perpetual Inventory", Rosalind E. Krauss, October – MIT Press, 2010.</ref>

Particularly in his later writings, Derrida addressed ethical and political themes in his work. Some critics consider ''[[Speech and Phenomena]]'' (1967) to be his most important work, while others cite ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' (1967), ''[[Writing and Difference]]'' (1967), and ''[[Margins of Philosophy]]'' (1972). These writings influenced various activists and political movements.<ref name="obituary"/> He became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious abstruseness of his work made him controversial.<ref name="obituary"/><ref name="stanford">Lawlor, Leonard. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/ "Jacques Derrida"]. ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. plato.stanford.edu. 22 November 2006; last modified 6 October 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2017.</ref>

==Early life and education==
Derrida was born on 15 July 1930, in a summer home in [[El Biar]] ([[Algiers]]), Algeria,<ref name="Jackie"/> to Haïm Aaron Prosper Charles (known as "Aimé") Derrida (1896–1970), who worked all his life for the wine and spirits company Tachet, including as a travelling salesman (his son reflected the job was "exhausting" and "humiliating", his father forced him to be a "docile employee" to the extent of waking early to do the accounts at the dining-room table),<ref>Powell (2006), p. 11.</ref> and Georgette Sultana Esther (1901–1991),<ref>Bennington (1991), p. 325.</ref> daughter of Moïse Safar.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 3.</ref> His family was [[Sephardic Jewish]] (originally from [[Toledo, Spain|Toledo]]) and became French in 1870 when the [[Crémieux Decree]] granted full French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 2.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.studiovisit.net/SV.Derrida.pdf |title=Jacques Derrida: The Last Interview |work=Studio Visit |date=November 2004 |orig-year=First published 10 August 2004 in ''Le Monde'' |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305215949/http://www.studiovisit.net/SV.Derrida.pdf |archive-date=5 March 2009}}{{blockquote|I took part in the extraordinary transformation of the Algerian Jews; my great-grandparents were by language, custom, etc., still identified with Arabic culture. After the Cremieux Decree (1870), at the end of the 19th c., the following generation became bourgeois.}}</ref> His parents named him "Jackie", "which they considered to be an American name", although he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris; some reports indicate that he was named Jackie after the American child actor [[Jackie Coogan]], who had become well known around the world via his role in the 1921 [[Charlie Chaplin]] film [[The Kid (1921 film)|''The Kid'']].<ref name="Powell 2006, p. 12">Powell (2006), p. 12.</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france Obituary] in ''The Guardian''. Retrieved 2 August 2007.</ref><ref>Cixous (2001), p. vii; also see this [http://www.themodernword.com/features/interview_caputo.html interview with Derrida's long-term collaborator John Caputo] {{webarchive| url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050524102847/http://www.themodernword.com/features/interview_caputo.html |date=24 May 2005}}.</ref> He was also given the middle name [[Élie]] after his paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou, at his [[circumcision]]; this name was not recorded on his birth certificate unlike those of his siblings, and he would later call it his "hidden name".<ref>Peeters (2013), pp. 13.{{blockquote|When he was circumcised, he was given a second forename, Elie, which was not entered on his birth certificate, unlike the equivalent names of his brother and sister.}} See also {{cite book|last=Derrida|first=Jacques |title=Jacques Derrida|chapter=Circumfession |year=1993|publisher=The University of Chicago Press |page=96}}{{blockquote|'So I have borne, without bearing, without its ever being written (12-23-76)' the name of the prophet Élie, Elijah in English ... so I took myself toward the hidden name without its ever being written on the official records, the same name as that of the paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou Derrida ...}}</ref>

Derrida was the third of five children. His elder brother Paul Moïse died at less than three months old, the year before Derrida was born, leading him to suspect throughout his life his role as a replacement for his deceased brother.<ref name="Powell 2006, p. 12"/> Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar.

On the first day of the school year in 1942, [[French Algeria|French administrators in Algeria]]—implementing [[antisemitism]] quotas set by the [[Vichy France|Vichy]] government—expelled Derrida from his [[lycée]]. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students, and also took part in numerous [[association football|football]] competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers (such as [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], and [[André Gide|Gide]]) an instrument of revolt against family and society.<ref name="TeenBooks"/> His reading also included [[Albert Camus|Camus]] and [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]].<ref name = "TeenBooks" />

In the late 1940s, he attended the {{Interlanguage link|Lycée Bugeaud|fr}}, in Algiers;<ref name="Schrift p. 120"/> in 1949 he moved to Paris,<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="stanford"/> attending the [[Lycée Louis-le-Grand]],<ref name="Schrift p. 120"/> where his professor of philosophy was [[Étienne Borne]].<ref>Marc Goldschmidt, ''Jacques Derrida : une introduction'', 2003, p. 231.</ref> At that time he prepared for his entrance exam to the prestigious [[École Normale Supérieure]] (ENS); after failing the exam on his first try, he passed it on the second, and was admitted in 1952.<ref name="stanford"/> On his first day at ENS, Derrida met [[Louis Althusser]], with whom he became friends. A professor of his, Jan Czarnecki, was a progressive [[Protestant]] who would become a signer of the [[Manifesto of the 121]].<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ&dq=%22derrida%22+%22czarnecki%22+%22protestant%22&pg=PT82 |isbn=9780745663029 |title=Derrida: A Biography |date=27 August 2013 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons}}</ref> After visiting the [[Husserl-Archives Leuven|Husserl Archive]] in [[Leuven]], Belgium (1953–1954), he completed his master's degree in philosophy (''{{Interlanguage link|diplôme d'études supérieures|fr}}'') on [[Edmund Husserl]]. He then passed the highly competitive ''[[agrégation]]'' exam in 1956. Derrida received a grant for studies at [[Harvard University]], and he spent the 1956–57 academic year reading [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' at the [[Widener Library]].<ref name = "Caputo97P25">Caputo (1997), p. 25.</ref>

==Career==
During the [[Algerian War of Independence]] of 1954–1962, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959.{{citation needed|date=August 2024}} Following the war, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]], where he was an assistant of [[Suzanne Bachelard]] (daughter of [[Gaston Bachelard]]), [[Georges Canguilhem]], [[Paul Ricœur]] (who in these years coined the term ''[[hermeneutics of suspicion]]''), and [[Jean Wahl]].<ref>Bennington (1991), p. 330.</ref> His wife, Marguerite, gave birth to their first child, [[Pierre Alféri|Pierre]], in 1963. In 1964, on the recommendation of [[Louis Althusser]] and [[Jean Hyppolite]], Derrida got a permanent teaching position at the ENS, which he kept until 1984.<ref name="Powell06p34-5"/><ref name="Powell06p58"/> In 1965 Derrida began an association with the ''[[Tel Quel]]'' group of literary and philosophical theorists, which lasted for seven years.<ref name="Powell06p58">Powell (2006), p. 58.</ref> Derrida's subsequent distance from the ''Tel Quel'' group, after 1971, was connected to his reservations about their embrace of [[Maoism]] and of the Chinese [[Cultural Revolution]].<ref>Leslie Hill, [https://books.google.com/books?id=oWoAcsayEz8C ''The Cambridge introduction to Jacques Derrida'']: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 55.</ref>

With "[[Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences]]", his contribution to a 1966 colloquium on [[structuralism]] at [[Johns Hopkins University]], his work began to gain international prominence. At the same colloquium Derrida would meet [[Jacques Lacan]] and [[Paul de Man]], the latter an important interlocutor in the years to come.<ref>Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, ''Jacques Derrida'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 331</ref> 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]]''.

In 1980, he received his first [[honorary doctorate]] (from [[Columbia University]]) and was awarded his [[State doctorate]] (''doctorat d'État'') by submitting to the [[University of Paris]] ten of his previously published books in conjunction with a defense of his intellectual project under the title "L'inscription de la philosophie : Recherches sur l'interprétation de l'écriture" ("Inscription in Philosophy: Research on the Interpretation of Writing").<ref name="Schrift p. 120"/><ref name="Powell p. 145">Powell (2006), p. 145.</ref> The text of Derrida's defense was based on an abandoned draft [[doctoral thesis]] he had prepared in 1957 under the direction of [[Jean Hyppolite]] at the ENS entitled "The Ideality of the Literary Object"<ref name="Powell p. 145"/> ("L'idéalité de l'objet littéraire");<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120211225423/http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.com/f/index.php?sp=livAut&auteur_id=1522 Jacques Derrida – Editions de Minuit]</ref> his 1980 dissertation 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 traveled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions. Derrida became full professor (''{{Interlanguage link multi|directeur d'études|fr}}'') at the [[École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]] in Paris from 1984 (he had been elected at the end of 1983).<ref name="Powell p. 145"/> With [[François Châtelet]] and others he in 1983 co-founded the [[Collège international de philosophie]] (CIPH; 'International college of philosophy'), an institution intended to provide a location for philosophical research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academia. He was elected as its first president. In 1985 [[Sylviane Agacinski]] gave birth to Derrida's third child, Daniel.<ref name="Guardian20041011">[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france "Obituary: Jacques Derrida"], by Derek Attridge and Thomas Baldwin, ''[[The Guardian]]'', 11 October 2004. Retrieved 19 January 2010.</ref>

On 8 May 1985, Derrida was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]], to Class IV – Humanities, Section 3 -Criticism and Philology.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |title=Members Elected May 8, 1985 |journal=Records of the Academy |date=1985 |issue=1984/1985 |page=51 |jstor=3785759}}</ref>

In 1986 Derrida became Professor of the Humanities at the [[University of California, Irvine]], where he taught until shortly before his death in 2004. His papers were filed in the university archives. When Derrida's colleague, Dragan Kujundzic, was accused of sexual assault, Derrida wrote a letter to then-Chancellor Cicerone saying "if the scandalous procedure" against Kujundzic was not "interrupted or cancelled," he would end all his "relations with UCI." Regarding his archival papers, there would be "another consequence: since I never take back what I have given, my papers would of course remain the property of UCI and the Special Collections department of the library. However, it goes without saying that the spirit in which I contributed to the constitution of these archives (which is still underway and growing every year) would have been seriously damaged.  Without renouncing my commitments, I would regret having made them and would reduce their fulfillment to the barest minimum."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Derrida |first1=Jacques |title=Letter from Jacques Derrida to Ralph J. Cicerone, then Chancellor of UCI. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100523062430/http://jacques-derrida.org/Cicerone.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=23 May 2010 |url=http://jacques-derrida.org/Cicerone.html|website=jacques-derrida.org |access-date=23 May 2010}}</ref> After Derrida's death, his widow and sons said they wanted copies of UCI's archives shared with the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France. The university had sued in an attempt to get manuscripts and correspondence from Derrida's widow and children that it believed the philosopher had promised to UC Irvine's collection, although it dropped the suit in 2007.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2007/02/15/uc-irvine-drops-suit-over-derridas-personal-papers/ |author=Farhang Erfani |date=February 15, 2007 |title=UC Irvine drops suit over Derrida's personal papers |url-status=dead |archive-date=20 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120520021511/http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2007/02/15/uc-irvine-drops-suit-over-derridas-personal-papers/}}</ref>

Derrida was a regular visiting professor at several other major American and European universities, including [[Johns Hopkins University]], [[Yale University]], [[New York University]], [[Stony Brook University]], [[The New School for Social Research]], and [[European Graduate School]].<ref>[https://egs.edu/biography/jacques-derrida/ Jacques Derrida Former Professor of Media Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS.]</ref>

He was awarded honorary doctorates by the [[University of Cambridge]] (1992), [[Columbia University]], [[The New School for Social Research]], the [[University of Essex]], [[Katholieke Universiteit Leuven]], the [[University of Silesia]], the [[University of Coimbra]], the [[University of Athens]], and many others around the world. In 2001, he received the [[:De:Theodor-W.-Adorno-Preis|Adorno-Preis]] from the [[Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main|University of Frankfurt]].

Derrida's honorary degree at Cambridge was protested by leading philosophers in the analytic tradition. Philosophers including [[Willard Van Orman Quine|Quine]], [[Ruth Barcan Marcus|Marcus]], and [[David Malet Armstrong|Armstrong]] wrote a letter to the university objecting that "Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour," and "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>{{cite web |url=http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2016/03/the-letter-against-derridas-honorary-degree.html |title=The Letter against Derrida's Honorary Degree, re-examined |access-date=3 September 2018}}</ref>

Late in his life, Derrida participated in making two biographical documentaries, ''D'ailleurs, Derrida'' (''Derrida's Elsewhere'') by [[Safaa Fathy]] (1999),<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356496/ IMDb] {{full citation needed|date=September 2023}}</ref> and ''[[Derrida (film)|Derrida]]'' by [[Kirby Dick]] and Amy Ziering Kofman (2002).<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303326/ IMDb] {{full citation needed|date=September 2023}}</ref>

{{anchor|Debate with Jean Baudrillard}}On 19 February 2003, with the [[2003 invasion of Iraq]] impending, {{ill|René Major|fr|René Major}} moderated a debate entitled "Pourquoi La Guerre Aujourd'hui?" [[Jean Baudrillard#Debate with Jacques Derrida|between Derrida and Jean Baudrillard]], co-hosted by ''Major's Institute for Advanced Studies in Psychoanalysis'' and ''[[Le Monde Diplomatique]]''. The debate discussed the relation between terrorist attacks and the invasion.<ref name='Guerre'>{{cite journal |id={{Project MUSE|666299}} |last1=Brennan |first1=Eugene |title=Pourquoi la guerre aujourd'hui? by Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida (review) |journal=French Studies: A Quarterly Review |date=2017 |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=449 |doi=10.1093/fs/knx092}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Vincent B. Leitch reviews Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, Pourquoi la Guerre Aujourd'hui? |website=Critical Inquiry |url=https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/vincent_b._leitch_reviews_baudrillard_and_derrida |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210328160748/https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/vincent_b._leitch_reviews_baudrillard_and_derrida |archive-date=28 March 2021}}</ref>

==Personal life and death==
In June 1957, he married the psychoanalyst [[Marguerite Aucouturier]] in [[Boston]].

Derrida was diagnosed with [[pancreatic cancer]] in 2002.<ref name="stanford" /> He died during surgery in a hospital in Paris in the early hours of 9 October 2004.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21050-2004Oct9.html, "Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher"], ''Washington Post'', 9 October 2004. Retrieved 9 May 2012.</ref><ref name="obituary">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/jacques-derrida-abstruse-theorist-dies-at-74.html |title=Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74 |last=Kandell |first=Jonathan |work=The New York Times|date=10 October 2004}}</ref><ref>Peeters, Benoît (2013). [https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ ''Derrida: A Biography'']. Translated by Andrew Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 540</ref>

At the time of his death, Derrida had agreed to go for the summer to [[University of Heidelberg]] as holder of the [[Hans-Georg Gadamer|Gadamer]] professorship,<ref name="uni-heidelberg.de">{{cite web |url=http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/press/news/press358_e.html |title=The University of Heidelberg Mourns the Death of Jacques Derrida |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304194718/http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/press/news/press358_e.html |archive-date=4 March 2016 |url-status=dead |date=12 October 2004}}</ref> whose invitation was expressed by the hermeneutic philosopher himself before his death. Peter Hommelhoff, Rector at Heidelberg at that time, would summarize Derrida's place as: "Beyond the boundaries of philosophy as an academic discipline he was a leading intellectual figure not only for the humanities but for the cultural perception of a whole age."<ref name="uni-heidelberg.de"/>

==Philosophy==
{{Main|Deconstruction}}
Derrida referred to himself as a historian.<ref name="Afterword88P130" /><ref name="LitHistorian">Derrida (1989) ''This Strange Institution Called Literature'', p. 54: {{blockquote|Contrary to what some people believe or have an interest in making believe, I consider myself very much a historian, very historicist [...] Deconstruction calls for a highly "historian's" attitude (''Of Grammatology'', for example, is a history book through and through).}}</ref> He questioned assumptions of the [[Western philosophical tradition]] and also more broadly [[Western culture]].<ref name="NationObituaries"/> By questioning the dominant discourses, and trying to modify them, he attempted to [[democratize]] the university scene and to politicize it.<ref name="CambridgeInterviewOct92">Derrida (1992) ''Cambridge Review'', pp. 404, 408–13.</ref> Derrida called his challenge to the assumptions of [[Western culture]] "[[deconstruction]]".<ref name="NationObituaries"/> On some occasions, Derrida referred to deconstruction as a radicalization of a certain spirit of [[Marxism]].<ref>Derrida (1976) ''Where a Teaching Body Begins'', English translation 2002, p. 72.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |year=1993 |title=Spectres of Marx |page=92 |language=fr}}</ref>

With his detailed readings of works from Plato to Rousseau to Heidegger, Derrida frequently argues that Western philosophy has uncritically allowed metaphorical depth models{{Technical inline|date=July 2019}} to govern its conception of language and consciousness. He sees these often unacknowledged assumptions as part of a "metaphysics of presence" to which philosophy has bound itself. This "logocentrism", Derrida argues, creates "marked" or hierarchized binary oppositions that have an effect on everything from the conception of speech's relation to writing to the understanding of racial difference. Deconstruction is an attempt to expose and undermine such "metaphysics".

Derrida approaches texts as constructed around binary oppositions which all speech has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This approach to text is, in a broad sense, influenced by the [[semiology]] of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]].<ref name="Royle04p62">[[Nicholas Royle Emeritus Professor University of Sussex|Nicholas Royle]] (2004), [https://books.google.com/books?id=nNaSdb9VMTwC ''Jacques Derrida''], pp. 62–63.</ref><ref name="Ferraris97p76">Derrida and Ferraris (1997), p. 76:
{{blockquote|I take great interest in questions of language and rhetoric, and I think they deserve enormous consideration, but there is a point where the authority of final jurisdiction is neither rhetorical nor linguistic, nor even discursive. The notion of trace or of text is introduced to mark the limits of the linguistic turn. This is one more reason why I prefer to speak of 'mark' rather than of language. In the first place, the mark is not anthropological; it is prelinguistic; it is the possibility of language, and it is everywhere there is a relation to another thing or relation to another. For such relations, the mark has no need of language.}}</ref> Saussure, considered to be one of the fathers of [[structuralism]], posited that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language.<ref>{{cite book|last=Saussure|first=Ferdinand de|title=Course in General Linguistics|date=1916|orig-date=trans. 1959|publisher=New York Philosophical Library|location=New York|pages=121–22|url=http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|access-date=10 December 2011|archive-date=31 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190731010622/http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|url-status=dead}}
{{blockquote|In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language, there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. [...] A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values.}}</ref>

Perhaps Derrida's most quoted and famous assertion,<ref name="Royle04p62"/> which appears in an essay on [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] in his book ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' (1967),<ref name="Derrida67p158">Derrida (1967) ''Of Grammatology'', Part II: "Introduction to the "Age of Rousseau," section 2 "...That Dangerous Supplement...", title "The Exorbitant. Question of Method", pp. 158–59, 163.</ref> is the statement that "there is no outside-text" ({{lang|fr|il n'y a pas de hors-texte}}).<ref name="Derrida67p158"/> Critics of Derrida have been often accused of having mistranslated the phrase in French to suggest he had written "{{lang|fr|Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte}}" ("There is nothing outside the text") and of having widely disseminated this translation to make it appear that Derrida is suggesting that nothing exists but words.<ref name="Afterword88P136"/><ref name="Reilly05">Reilly, Brian J. (2005) ''Jacques Derrida'', in Kritzman (2005), p. 500.</ref><ref name="Coward90">[[Harold Coward|Coward, Harold G.]] (1990) [https://books.google.com/books?id=JtyqhtCW7jQC ''Derrida and Indian philosophy''], pp. 83, 137.</ref><ref name="Pidgen90">Pidgen, Charles R. (1990) ''On a Defence of Derrida'', in [https://books.google.com/books?id=M71ZAAAAMAAJ ''The Critical review''] (1990), Issues 30–32, pp. 40–41.</ref><ref name=wpost04Sullivan>Sullivan, Patricia (2004), [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21050-2004Oct9.html ''Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher''], in ''[[Washington Post]]'', 10 October 2004, p. C11. Retrieved 2 August 2007.</ref> 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."<ref name="Afterword88P136">Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', p. 136.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Glendinning |first=Simon |title=Jacques Derrida: A Very Short Introduction |year=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

===Early works<!--linked from the 'Life' section-->===
Derrida began his career examining the limits of [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]]. His first lengthy academic manuscript, written as a dissertation for his {{lang|fr|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> Gary Banham has said that the dissertation is "in many respects the most ambitious of Derrida's interpretations with Husserl, not merely in terms of the number of works addressed but also in terms of the extraordinarily focused nature of its investigation."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Banham|first=Gary|date=1 January 2005|title=The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, by Jacques Derrida|journal=Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology|volume=36|issue=1|pages=99–101|doi=10.1080/00071773.2005.11007469|s2cid=170686297|issn=0007-1773}}</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 (book)|Positions]]'' (1972), Derrida said: 
{{blockquote|text=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''.|source=Derrida, 1967, interview with Henri Ronse<ref name="67RonseP5">J. Derrida (1967), interview with Henri Ronse, p. 5.</ref>}}

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;<ref>Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in ''[[Writing and Difference]]'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 278.</ref> this has led US academics to label his thought as a form of [[post-structuralism]].<ref name="Bensmaia05">Bensmaïa, Réda, "Poststructuralism", in Kritzman (2005), pp. 92–93.</ref><ref name="Poster88">Poster (1988), pp. 5–6.</ref><ref>
{{blockquote|... 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 (philosophy)|eidos]]'', ''[[archē]]'', ''[[Telos (philosophy)|telos]]'', ''[[energeia]]'', ''[[ousia]]'' (essence, existence, substance, subject), ''[[aletheia|alētheia]]'', transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth.|"Structure, Sign and Play" in ''Writing and Difference'', p. 353.}}</ref>

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 had a mixed relationship.

===Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959)===
In the early 1960s, Derrida began speaking and writing publicly, addressing the most topical debates at the time. One of these was the new and increasingly fashionable movement of [[structuralism]], which was being widely favoured as the successor to the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] approach, the latter having been started by Husserl sixty years earlier. Derrida's countercurrent take on the issue, at a prominent international conference, was so influential that it reframed the discussion from a celebration of the triumph of structuralism to a "phenomenology vs structuralism debate".

Phenomenology, as envisioned by Husserl, is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the rationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since [[Plato]] in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience"; 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.<ref>{{Citation |last=Smith |first=David Woodruff |title=Phenomenology |date=2018 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Summer 2018 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref> For the structuralists, this was a false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Poythress |first=Vern S. |date=31 May 2012 |title=Philosophical Roots of Phenomenological and Structuralist Literary Criticism |url=https://frame-poythress.org/philosophical-roots-of-phenomenological-and-structuralist-literary-criticism/ |access-date=20 June 2021 |website=The Works of John Frame & Vern Poythress}}</ref>

In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked 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:

{{blockquote|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.}}</ref> 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''), he addresses these same questions to Lévi-Strauss and the structuralists. This is clear from the very first line of the paper (p. 278):

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

Between these 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 original 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 name="DerridaScarpetta71">Derrida (1971), Scarpetta interview, quote from pp. 77–8:

{{blockquote|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'' ({{lang|fr|[[différance]]}}): inscription, mark, text and not only ''thesis or theme''-inscription of the ''thesis''.}}

</ref><ref>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 that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including "deconstruction".<ref>It is opposed to the concept of original purity, which destabilises the thought of both "genesis" and "structure", cf. [[Rodolphe Gasché]], ''The Tain of the Mirror'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 146:

{{blockquote|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.}}

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>

Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. He achieved this by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, to determine what aspects of those texts run 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 in which 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:

{{blockquote|One of the more persistent misunderstandings that have 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.}}</ref>

===1967–1972<!--linked from the 'Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959)' section-->===
Derrida's interests crossed disciplinary boundaries, and his knowledge of a wide array of diverse material was reflected in the three collections of work published in 1967: ''[[Speech and Phenomena]]'', ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' (initially submitted as a {{lang|fr|[[doctorat de spécialité]]}} thesis under [[Maurice de Gandillac]]),<ref name="Schrift p. 120">Alan D. Schrift (2006) ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 120.</ref> and ''[[Writing and Difference]]''.<ref name="67RonseP4">Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, pp. 4–5:{{blockquote|[''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>

On several occasions, Derrida has acknowledged his debt to [[Edmund Husserl|Husserl]] and [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], and stated that without them he would not have said a single word.<ref name="67RonseP8">Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, p. 8.</ref><ref name="LetterJap">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 name="67RonseP4"/> In another essay in ''Writing and Difference'' entitled "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas", the roots of another major theme in Derrida's thought emerge: the Other as opposed to the Same<ref>Derrida, J. Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas, ''Writing and Difference''. Chicago: University of Chicago. 97–192.</ref> "Deconstructive analysis deprives the present of its prestige and exposes it to something ''tout autre'', "wholly other", beyond what is foreseeable from the present, beyond the horizon of the "same"."<ref name="Caputo97P42">Caputo (1997), p. 42.</ref> Other than Rousseau, Husserl, Heidegger and [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinas]], these three books discussed, and/or relied upon, the works of many philosophers and authors, including linguist [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]],<ref>''Linguistics and Grammatology'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp. 27–73.</ref> [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]],<ref name="FromRestricted">"From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]],<ref name="Cogitothe">"Cogito and the History of Madness" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> [[Georges Bataille|Bataille]],<ref name="FromRestricted" /> [[René Descartes|Descartes]],<ref name="Cogitothe" /> anthropologist [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]],<ref>''The Violence of the Letter: From Lévi-Strauss to Rousseau'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp. 101–140.</ref><ref>"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in ''Writing and Difference''</ref> paleontologist [[André Leroi-Gourhan|Leroi-Gourhan]],<ref>''Of Grammatology'', pp. 83–86.</ref> psychoanalyst [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]],<ref>"Freud and the Scene of Writing" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> and writers such as [[Edmond Jabès|Jabès]]<ref>"Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book" and "Ellipsis" in ''Writing and Difference'', pp. 64–78 and 295–300.</ref> and [[Antonin Artaud|Artaud]].<ref>"La Parole soufflée" and "The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref>

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">{{Cite journal| jstor=2780292| title=How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida| journal=American Journal of Sociology| volume=93| issue=3| pages=584–622| last1=Lamont| first1=Michele| date=November 1987| doi=10.1086/228790| s2cid=145090666| url=https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3428546/lamont_derrida.pdf?sequence=4}}</ref> and that this is a [[paradigm]] inherited from Judaism and [[Hellenistic philosophy|Hellenism]].<ref name="Borody98"/> He in turn describes logocentrism as [[Androcracy|phallocratic]], [[patriarchal]] and [[masculine|masculinist]].<ref name="Borody98"/><ref>[[Hélène Cixous]], [[Catherine Clément]] [1975] ''La jeune née''.</ref> 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] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111102140336/http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/wayneb/ |date=2 November 2011 }} (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 (semiotics)|signifier/signified]], [[Mind–body problem|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]] of Western culture.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Reynolds |first=Jack |title=Jacques Derrida (1930—2004) |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/derrida/ |access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref>

In 1968, he published his influential essay "[[Plato's Pharmacy]]" in the French journal ''[[Tel Quel]]''.<ref name="Spurgin97">Spurgin, Tim (1997) [http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/pharmacy.html Reader's Guide to Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110224024836/http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/pharmacy.html |date=24 February 2011}}</ref><ref name="Graff93">Graff (1993).</ref> This essay was later collected in ''Dissemination'', one of three books published by Derrida in 1972, along with the essay collection ''Margins of Philosophy'' and the collection of interviews entitled ''[[Positions (book)|Positions]]''.

===1973–1980===
Starting in 1972, Derrida produced on average more than one book per year. Derrida continued to produce important works, such as ''[[Glas (book)|Glas]]'' (1974) and ''[[The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond]]'' (1980).

Derrida received increasing attention in the United States after 1972, where he was a regular visiting professor and lecturer at several major American universities. In the 1980s, during the [[American 1980s culture wars|American culture wars]], [[conservatives]] started a dispute over Derrida's influence and legacy upon American intellectuals,<ref name="NationObituaries"/> and claimed that he influenced American literary critics and theorists more than academic philosophers.<ref name="Lamont87" /><ref name="Hansson">{{cite journal|author=Sven Ove Hansson |department=Editorial |journal=Theoria |volume=72 |at=Part 1 |date=2006 |url=http://www.infra.kth.se/phil/theoria/editorial721.htm |title=Philosophical Schools |access-date=24 February 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060718054747/http://www.infra.kth.se/phil/theoria/editorial721.htm |archive-date=18 July 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Jones-Katz |first1=Gregory |title=Deconstruction: An American Tale |url=https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/gregory-jones-katz-deconstruction-america/ |work=Boston Review |date=30 September 2016}}</ref>

===''Of Spirit'' (1987)===
On 14 March 1987, Derrida presented at the CIPH conference entitled "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.<ref>Derrida (1989) ''Of Spirit'', pp. vii-1.</ref> With his Nazi political engagement in 1933, however, Heidegger came out as a champion of the "German Spirit", and only withdrew from an exalting interpretation of the term in 1953. Derrida asks, "What of this meantime?"<ref>Derrida (1989) ''Of Spirit'', p. 1</ref> His book connects in a number of respects with his long engagement of Heidegger (such as "The Ends of Man" in ''Margins of Philosophy'', his Paris seminar on philosophical nationality and nationalism in the mid-1980s, and the essays published in English as ''Geschlecht'' and ''Geschlecht II'').<ref>Derrida (1989) ''Of Spirit'', pp. 7, 11, 117–118.</ref> He considers "four guiding threads" of Heideggerian philosophy that form "the knot of this ''Geflecht'' [braid]": "the question of the question", "the essence of technology", "the discourse of animality", and "epochality" or "the hidden teleology or the narrative order."<ref>Derrida (1989) ''Of Spirit'', pp. 8–12.</ref>

''Of Spirit'' contributes to the long [[Heidegger and Nazism|debate on Heidegger's Nazism]] and appeared at the same time as the French publication of a book by a previously unknown Chilean writer, [[Victor Farías]], who charged that Heidegger's philosophy amounted to a wholehearted endorsement of the [[Nazism|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 called Farías 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.<ref>Powell (2006), p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=sbhlgspwVwMC&pg=PA167 167].</ref>

===1990s: political and ethical themes===
Some have argued that Derrida's work took a political and ethical "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). Some refer to ''[[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) [https://books.google.com/books?id=D7jq50nVzGAC ''Understanding Derrida''], p. 49.</ref><ref>''Gift of Death'', pp. 57–72.</ref> and from [[Søren Kierkegaard]]'s ''[[Fear and Trembling]]''.

However, scholars such as [[Leonard Lawlor]], [[Robert Magliola]], and [[Nicole Anderson (philosopher)|Nicole Anderson]]<ref>Nicole Anderson, ''Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure'', Publishing Plc, London, 2013</ref> have argued that the "turn" has been exaggerated.<ref>[[Leonard Lawlor]], ''[[Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology]]'', Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 211; Robert Magliola, [https://global.oup.com/academic/search?q=Robert+Magliola&cc=us&lang=en ''On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture''], Scholars Press of American Academy of Religion, 1997; Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 157–165; Nicole Anderson, ''Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure'', Bloomsbury, 2012, p. 24.</ref>{{Additional citation needed|date=May 2020}} Some, including Derrida himself, have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his "political turn" can be dated to earlier essays.<ref name="Martha C. Nussbaum 1990: 29, 227">{{cite book|last1=Nussbaum|first1=Martha C. |url=https://archive.org/details/lovesknowledge00mart/page/29|title=Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1990|isbn=978-0195074857|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lovesknowledge00mart/page/29 29]|chapter=Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature|chapter-url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/loves-knowledge-9780195074857}}{{blockquote|[He] chose to address the American Philosophical Association on the topic of Aristotle's theory of friendship ("Journal of Philosophy" 85 (1988), 632–44); Barbara Johnson's "A World of Difference" (Baltimore, 1987) argues that Deconstruction can make valuable ethical and social contributions; and in general there seems to be a return to the ethical and practical...}}</ref>

Derrida develops an ethicist view respecting to hospitality, exploring the idea that two types of hospitalities exist, conditional and unconditional. Though this contributed to the works of many scholars, Derrida was seriously criticized for this.<ref>Rorty, R. (1995). Habermas, Derrida, and the functions of philosophy. Revue internationale de philosophie, 49(194 (4), 437–459.</ref><ref>Rorty, R. (1989). "Is Derrida a transcendental philosopher?". ''The Yale Journal of Criticism'', 2(2), 207.</ref><ref>McCumber, J. (2000). Philosophy and Freedom: Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, Foucault. Indiana University Press.</ref>

Derrida's contemporary readings of [[Emmanuel Levinas]], [[Walter Benjamin]], [[Carl Schmitt]], [[Jan Patočka]], on themes such as law, justice, responsibility, and friendship, had a significant impact on fields beyond philosophy. Derrida and Deconstruction influenced aesthetics, literary criticism, architecture, [[film theory]], [[anthropology]], sociology, [[historiography]], law, [[psychoanalysis]], theology, [[feminism]], gay and lesbian studies and political theory. [[Jean-Luc Nancy]], [[Richard Rorty]], [[Geoffrey Hartman]], [[Harold Bloom]], [[Rosalind Krauss]], [[Hélène Cixous]], [[Julia Kristeva]], [[Duncan Kennedy (legal philosopher)|Duncan Kennedy]], [[Gary Peller]], [[Drucilla Cornell]], [[Alan Hunt (professor)|Alan Hunt]], [[Hayden White]], [[Mario Kopić]], and [[Alun Munslow]] are some of the authors who have been influenced by deconstruction.

Derrida delivered a eulogy at Levinas' funeral, later published as ''Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas'', an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy. Derrida used [[Bracha L. Ettinger]]'s interpretation of Lévinas' notion of femininity and transformed his own earlier reading of this subject respectively.<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> {{irrelevant citation|date=January 2025|reason= the cited conversation does not reference Derrida's use; need a ref to support Derrida's use of Ettinger's interpretation.}}

Derrida continued to produce readings of literature, writing extensively on [[Maurice Blanchot]], [[Paul Celan]], and others.

In 1991 he published ''The Other Heading'', in which he discussed the concept of [[Identity (social science)|identity]] (as in [[cultural identity]], [[European identity]], and [[national identity]]), in the name of which in Europe have been unleashed "the worst violences," "the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, religious or nationalist fanaticism."<ref>''The Other Heading'', pp. 5–6.</ref>

At the 1997 [[Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle|Cerisy Conference]], Derrida delivered a ten-hour address on the subject of "the autobiographical animal" entitled [[The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)]]. Engaging with questions surrounding the ontology of nonhuman animals, the ethics of animal slaughter and the difference between humans and other animals, the address has been seen as initiating a late "animal turn" in Derrida's philosophy, although Derrida himself has said that his interest in animals is present in his earliest writings.<ref>Derrida (2008), 15.</ref>

===''The Work of Mourning'' (1981–2001)===
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'' (2001), which was expanded in the 2003 French edition, ''Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde'' (literally, "Unique each time, the end of the world"), to include essays dedicated to [[Gérard Granel]] and Maurice Blanchot.

===2002 film===
In October 2002, at the theatrical opening of the film ''[[Derrida (film)|Derrida]]'', he said that, in many ways, he felt more and more close to [[Guy Debord]]'s work, and that this closeness appears in Derrida's texts. Derrida mentioned, in particular, "everything I say about the media, technology, the spectacle, and the 'criticism of the show', so to speak, and the markets – the becoming-a-spectacle of everything, and the exploitation of the spectacle."<ref name="Derrida02Q&A">Derrida (2002) Q&A session at Film Forum.</ref> Among the places in which Derrida mentions the ''[[Spectacle (critical theory)|Spectacle]]'', is a 1997 interview about the notion of the intellectual.<ref name="Derrida 97 Intellectuels p39">{{cite book |last=Derrida |orig-year=1997 |chapter=Intellectuals. Attempt at Definition by Themselves |year=2005 |pages=39–40 |publisher=Stanford University Press |title=Paper Machine |isbn=978-0804746205}}</ref>

==Politics==
Derrida engaged with a variety of political issues, movements, and debates throughout his career. In 1968, he participated in the [[May 68]] protests in France [and met frequently with [[Maurice Blanchot]]]?.<ref>Bennington (1991), p. 332.</ref> However, he expressed concerns about the "cult of spontaneity" and anti-unionist euphoria that he observed.<ref name="Derrida91MagLitEwald">Derrida (1991), "A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking", pp. 347–9.</ref> He also registered his objections to the [[Vietnam War]] in a lecture he gave in the United States. Derrida signed a [[French petition against age of consent laws|petition against age of consent laws]] in 1977,<ref>{{cite news |last=Henley |first=Jon |date=2001-02-23 |title=Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68 |website=[[The Guardian]] |location=Paris |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley |url-status=live |access-date=2019-10-20 |archive-date=2019-11-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191105034721/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley}}{{blockquote|'French law recognises in 12- and 13-year-olds a capacity for discernment that it can judge and punish,' said a second petition signed by Sartre and De Beauvoir, along with fellow intellectuals Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida; a leading child psychologist, Françoise Dolto; and writers Philippe Sollers, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Louis Aragon. 'But it rejects such a capacity when the child's emotional and sexual life is concerned. It should acknowledge the right of children and adolescents to have relations with whomever they choose.'}}</ref> and in 1981 he founded the French Jan Hus association to support dissident Czech intellectuals.<ref name="Powell06p151">Powell (2006), p. 151.</ref>

In 1981, Derrida was arrested by the [[Government structure of Communist Czechoslovakia|Czechoslovakian government]] for leading a conference without authorization and charged with [[Illegal drug trade|drug trafficking]], although he claimed the drugs were planted on him. He was released with the help of the [[François Mitterrand|Mitterrand]] government and [[Michel Foucault]].<ref>Jacques Derrida, "'To Do Justice to Freud': The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis," ''Resistances of Psychoanalysis'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 70–71.</ref> Derrida was an advocate for [[nuclear disarmament]],<ref>Derrida, Jacques. "No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)". Diacritics, 1984.</ref> protested against [[apartheid]] in [[South Africa]], and met with [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] intellectuals during a visit to [[Jerusalem]] in 1988. He also opposed [[capital punishment]] and was involved in the campaign to free [[Mumia Abu-Jamal]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}

Although Derrida was not associated with any political party until 1995, he supported the Socialist candidacy of [[Lionel Jospin]], despite misgivings about such organizations.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 234.</ref> In the [[2002 French presidential election]], he refused to vote in the [[Two-round system|run-off election]] between [[History of far-right movements in France|far-right]] candidate [[Jean-Marie Le Pen]] and [[Centre-right politics|center-right]] [[Jacques Chirac]], citing a lack of acceptable choices.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT437].</ref> Derrida opposed the [[2003 invasion of Iraq]] and was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself within and beyond philosophy. He focused on understanding the political implications of notions such as responsibility, reason of state, decision, sovereignty, and democracy. By 2000, he was theorizing "democracy to come" and thinking about the limitations of existing democracies.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brenner |first=David |date=2005 |title="'Torn' between Justice and Forgiveness: Derrida on the Death Penalty and 'Lawful Lawlessness'" |url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/slps37&i=119 |access-date=2025-11-04 |website=heinonline.org}}</ref>

==Influences on Derrida==
Crucial readings in his adolescence were [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]]'s ''[[Reveries of a Solitary Walker]]'' and ''[[Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)|Confessions]]'', [[André Gide]]'s journal, ''[[La porte étroite]]'', ''[[Les nourritures terrestres]]'' and ''[[The Immoralist]]'';<ref name="TeenBooks"/> and the works of [[Friedrich Nietzsche]].<ref name="TeenBooks">Derrida (1989) ''This Strange Institution Called Literature'', pp. 35, 38–9.</ref> The phrase ''Families, I hate you!'' in particular, which inspired Derrida as an adolescent, is a famous verse from Gide's ''Les nourritures terrestres'', book IV.<ref>Gide's ''Les nourritures terrestres'', book IV: «Familles, je vous hais! Foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur.»</ref> In a 1991 interview Derrida commented on a similar verse, also from book IV of the same Gide work: "I hated the homes, the families, all the places where man thinks he'll find rest" (''Je haïssais les foyers, les familles, tous lieux où l'homme pense trouver un repos'').<ref>{{cite book |chapter=1991 Interview with [[Francois Ewald]] ''Wahn muß übers Denken wachen'' |translator=Werner Kolk |title=Literataz |year=1992 |pages=1–2 |language=German}} Quoted in {{cite journal |last=Gunn |first=Olivia |date=2007 |title=" Je ne suis pas de la famille " : Queerness as Exception in Gide's L 'immoraliste and Genet's Journal du Voleur |journal=Paroles gelées |issn=1094-7264 |volume=23 |issue=1 |doi=10.5070/PG7231003173 |url=https://escholarship.org/content/qt3891m6db/qt3891m6db.pdf?t=krnr1b |via=eScholarship, California Digital Library}}</ref>

Other influences upon Derrida are [[Martin Heidegger]],<ref name="67RonseP8"/><ref name="LetterJap"/> [[Plato]], [[Søren Kierkegaard]], [[Alexandre Kojève]], [[Maurice Blanchot]], [[Antonin Artaud]], [[Roland Barthes]], [[Georges Bataille]], [[Edmund Husserl]], [[Emmanuel Lévinas]], [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], [[Sigmund Freud]], [[Karl Marx]], [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], [[James Joyce]], [[Samuel Beckett]], [[J. L. Austin]]<ref name="Afterword88P130">Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', pp. 130–31.</ref> and [[Stéphane Mallarmé]].<ref>{{Cite book |language=en |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fPYL_NP-wskC&q=derrida%20and%20St%C3%A9phane%20Mallarm%C3%A9.&pg=PA217 |title=Stéphane Mallarmé |last=Pearson |first=Roger |date=15 May 2010 |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=9781861897275 |pages=217}}</ref>

His book, ''Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas'', reveals his mentorship by this philosopher and Talmudic scholar who practiced the phenomenological encounter with the Other in the form of the [[Face-to-face (philosophy)|Face]], which commanded human response.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Silverman |first=Hugh |date=Spring 2007 |title=Tracing Responsibility: Levinas between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida|journal=Journal of French Philosophy |volume=17 |pages=88–89 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49244472 |via=ResearchGate}}</ref> The use of deconstruction to read Jewish texts – like the [[Talmud]] – is relatively rare but has recently been attempted.<ref>Dal Bo (2019).</ref>

==Peers and contemporaries==
{{original research|section|date=December 2022}}
Derrida's philosophical friends, allies, students and the heirs of Derrida's thought include [[Paul de Man]], [[Jean-François Lyotard]], [[Louis Althusser]], [[Emmanuel Levinas]], [[Maurice Blanchot]], [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Jean-Luc Nancy]], [[Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe]], [[Sarah Kofman]], [[Hélène Cixous]], [[Bernard Stiegler]], [[Alexander García Düttmann]], Joseph Cohen, [[Geoffrey Bennington]], [[Jean-Luc Marion]], [[Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak]], Raphael Zagury-Orly, [[Jacques Ehrmann]], [[Avital Ronell]], [[Judith Butler]], [[Béatrice Galinon-Mélénec]], [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[Samuel Weber]], [[Catherine Malabou]], Michal Govrin and Claudette Sartiliot.

=== Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe ===
[[Jean-Luc Nancy]] and [[Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe]] were among Derrida's first students in France and went on to become well-known and important philosophers in their own right. Despite their considerable differences of subject, and often also of a method, they continued their close interaction with each other and with Derrida, from the early 1970s.

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

===Paul de Man===
{{Main|Paul de Man}}

Derrida's most prominent friendship in intellectual life was with Paul de Man, which began with their meeting at [[Johns Hopkins University]] and continued until de Man's death in 1983. De Man provided a somewhat different approach to deconstruction, and his readings of literary and philosophical texts were crucial in the training of a generation of readers.

Shortly after de Man's death, Derrida wrote the 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". The memoir 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 [[History of Belgium#World War II|German occupation of Belgium]], including several that were explicitly [[antisemitic]].

Critics of Derrida have argued that he minimizes the antisemitic character of de Man's writing. Some critics have found Derrida's treatment of this issue surprising, given that, for example, Derrida also spoke out against antisemitism and, in the 1960s, broke with the Heidegger disciple [[Jean Beaufret]] over Beaufret's instances of antisemitism, about which Derrida (and, after him, [[Maurice Blanchot]]) expressed shock.

=== Michel Foucault ===
Derrida's criticism of [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]] appears in the essay ''[[Cogito and the History of Madness]]'' (from ''Writing and Difference''). It was first given as a lecture on 4 March 1963, at a conference at [[Jean Wahl|Wahl]]'s ''[[Collège philosophique]]'', which Foucault attended, and caused a rift between the two men that was never fully mended.<ref name="Powell06p34-5">Powell (2006), pp. 34–5.</ref>

In an appendix added to the 1972 edition of his ''History of Madness'', Foucault disputed Derrida's interpretation of his work, and accused Derrida of practicing "a historically well-determined little pedagogy [...] which teaches the student that there is nothing outside the text [...]. A pedagogy which inversely gives to the voice of the masters that infinite sovereignty that allows it indefinitely to re-say the text."<ref>Foucault, Michel, ''History of Madness'', ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. xxiv, 573.</ref> According to historian [[Carlo Ginzburg]], Foucault may have written ''[[The Order of Things]]'' (1966) and ''[[The Archaeology of Knowledge]]'' partly under the stimulus of Derrida's criticism.<ref name="GinzburgNihilism">Carlo Ginzburg [1976], ''Il formaggio e i vermi'', translated in 1980 as [https://books.google.com/books?id=4IUREWq_o3MC ''The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller''], trans. Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), xviii. {{ISBN|978-0-8018-4387-7}}</ref> Carlo Ginzburg briefly labeled Derrida's criticism in ''Cogito and the History of Madness'', as "facile, nihilistic objections," without giving further argumentation.<ref name="GinzburgNihilism"/>

=== Derrida's translators ===
[[Geoffrey Bennington]], [[Avital Ronell]] and [[Samuel Weber]] belong to a group of Derrida translators. Many of Derrida's translators are esteemed thinkers in their own right. Derrida often worked in a collaborative arrangement, allowing his prolific output to be translated into English in a timely fashion.

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. [[Barbara Johnson]]'s translation of Derrida's ''Dissemination'' was published by The Athlone Press in 1981. 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.

Bennington, Brault, Kamuf, Naas, Elizabeth Rottenberg, and [[David Wills (writer)|David Wills]] are currently engaged in translating Derrida's previously unpublished seminars, which span from 1959 to 2003.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://derridaseminars.org/team.html |title=Derrida Seminar Translation Project |publisher=Derridaseminars.org |access-date=21 October 2012}}</ref> Volumes I and II of ''The Beast and the Sovereign'' (presenting Derrida's seminars from 12 December 2001 to 27 March 2002 and from 11 December 2002 to 26 March 2003), as well as ''The Death Penalty, Volume I'' (covering 8 December 1999 to 22 March 2000), have appeared in English translation. Further volumes currently projected for the series include ''Heidegger: The Question of Being and History'' (1964–1965), ''Death Penalty, Volume II'' (2000–2001), ''Perjury and Pardon, Volume I'' (1997–1998), and ''Perjury and Pardon, Volume II'' (1998–1999).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://derridaseminars.org/volumes.html |title=Derrida Seminar Translation Project |publisher=Derridaseminars.org |access-date=1 January 2014}}</ref>

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."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/Derrida/applied.html |title=Lovely Luton |publisher=Hydra.humanities.uci.edu |access-date=21 October 2012}}</ref>

=== Marshall McLuhan ===
Derrida was familiar with the work of [[Marshall McLuhan]], and since his early 1967 writings (''Of Grammatology'', ''Speech and Phenomena''), he speaks of language as a "medium,"<ref>''Speech and Phenomena'', Introduction.</ref> of phonetic writing as "the medium of the great metaphysical, scientific, technical, and economic adventure of the West."<ref>''Of Grammatology'', Part I.1.</ref>

He expressed his disagreement with McLuhan in regard to what he called McLuhan's ideology about the end of writing.<ref name="Poster2010">Poster (2010), pp. 3–4, 12–13.</ref> In a 1982 interview, he said:

{{blockquote|I think that there is an ideology in McLuhan's discourse that I don't agree with because he's an optimist as to the possibility of restoring an oral community which would get rid of the writing machines and so on. I think that's a very traditional myth which goes back to... let's say Plato, Rousseau... And instead of thinking that we are living at the end of writing, I think that in another sense we are living in the extension – the overwhelming extension – of writing. At least in the new sense... I don't mean the alphabetic writing down, but in the new sense of those writing machines that we're using now (e.g. the tape recorder). And this is writing too.<ref name="Brennan82">Derrida [1982] [http://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Derrida/Excuse.htm ''Excuse me, but I never said exactly so: Yet Another Derridean Interview''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160413130756/http://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Derrida/Excuse.htm |date=April 13, 2016}}, with Paul Brennan, ''On the Beach'' (Glebe NSW, Australia). No.1/1983: p. 42.</ref>}}

And in his 1972 essay ''Signature Event Context'' he said:

{{blockquote|As writing, communication, if one insists upon maintaining the word, is not the means of transport of sense, the exchange of intentions and meanings, the discourse and "communication of consciousnesses." We are not witnessing an end of writing which, to follow McLuhan's ideological representation, would restore a transparency or immediacy of social relations; but indeed a more and more powerful historical unfolding of a general writing of which the system of speech, consciousness, meaning, presence, truth, etc., would only be an effect, to be analyzed as such. It is this questioned effect that I have elsewhere called ''logocentrism''.<ref>Derrida (1972) ''Signature Event Context''.</ref>}}

=== Architectural thinkers ===
Derrida had a direct impact on the theories and practices of influential architects [[Peter Eisenman]] and [[Bernard Tschumi]] towards the end of the twentieth century. Derrida impacted a project that was theorized by Eisenman in ''Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman''.<ref>[https://www.amazon.com/Chora-Works-Jacques-Derrida-Eisenman/dp/1885254407 ''Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman''.]</ref> This design was architecturally conceived by Tschumi for the [[Parc de la Villette]] in Paris, which included a sieve, or harp-like structure that Derrida envisaged as a physical metaphor for the receptacle-like properties of the ''[[khôra]]''. Moreover, Derrida's commentaries on Plato's notion of ''khôra'' (χώρα) as set in the ''[[Timaeus (dialogue)|Timaeus]]'' (48e4) received later reflections in the philosophical works and architectural writings of the philosopher-architect [[Nader El-Bizri]] within the domain of [[phenomenology (architecture)|phenomenology]].

Derrida used "χώρα" to name a radical otherness that "gives place" for being. El-Bizri built on this by more narrowly taking ''khôra'' to name the radical happening of an ontological difference between being and beings.<ref>([[Nader El-Bizri]], 2004, 2011)</ref> El-Bizri's reflections on ''khôra'' are taken as a basis for tackling the meditations on ''dwelling'' and on ''being and space'' in [[Heidegger]]'s thought and the critical conceptions of space and place as they evolved in [[architectural theory]] (and its strands in phenomenological thinking),<ref>(Nader El-Bizri, 2018)</ref> and in history of philosophy and science, with a focus on geometry and optics.<ref>(Nader El-Bizri, 2001, 2004, 2011, 2015)</ref> This also describes El-Bizri's take on "econtology" as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (''Seinsfrage'') by way of the fourfold (''Das Geviert'') of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (''Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen''); and as also impacted by his own meditations on Derrida's take on "χώρα". Ecology is hence co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking<ref>{{cite journal |last1=El-Bizri |first1=Nader |title=Being at Home Among Things: Heidegger's Reflections on Dwelling |journal=Environment, Space, Place |date=2011 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=47–71 |isbn=978-606-8266-01-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=obA_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA45}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=El-Bizri |first1=Nader |title=This paper investigates the phenomenon of dwelling in Heidegger's thought |journal=Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai - Philosophia |date=2015 |volume=60 |issue=1 |pages=5–29 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=85257}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |doi=10.4324/9781315106267-9 |chapter=Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch |title=The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places |date=2018 |last1=El-Bizri |first1=Nader |pages=123–143 |isbn=978-1-315-10626-7 |s2cid=211958974}}</ref>
Derrida argued that the [[subjectile]] is like Plato's ''khôra'', Greek for space, receptacle or site. Plato proposes that ''khôra'' rests between the sensible and the intelligible, through which everything passes but in which nothing is retained. For example, an image needs to be held by something, just as a mirror will hold a reflection. For Derrida, ''khôra'' defies attempts at naming or the either/or logic, which he "deconstructed".

== Criticism ==

=== Criticism from Marxists ===
In a paper entitled ''Ghostwriting'',<ref name="Spivak 1995">{{cite journal |last1=Spivak |first1=Gayatri Chakravorty |title=Ghostwriting |journal=Diacritics |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=64–84 |year=1995 |jstor=465145 |doi=10.2307/465145}}</ref> [[Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak]]—the translator of Derrida's ''De la grammatologie'' (''Of Grammatology'') into English—criticised Derrida's understanding of Marx.{{How|date=April 2025}}<ref>{{cite book| editor1-last=Sprinker| editor1-first=Michael| author=Jacques Derrida| title=Ghostly Deamarctations: A Symposium On Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx"| year=2008| publisher=Verso
| location=London| isbn=9781844672110| chapter=Chapter 10: Marx & Sons| page=223| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g7zGmaggvesC}}</ref> Commenting on Derrida's ''Specters of Marx'', [[Terry Eagleton]] wrote "The portentousness is ingrained in the very letter of this book, as one theatrically inflected rhetorical question tumbles hard on the heels of another in a tiresomely mannered syntax which lays itself wide open to parody."<ref>{{cite book
| editor1-last=Sprinker| editor1-first=Michael| author=Terry Eagleton| title=Ghostly Deamarctations: A Symposium On Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx"| year=2008| publisher=Verso
| location=London| isbn=9781844672110| chapter=Chapter 5: Marxism without Marx| pages=83–87| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g7zGmaggvesC}}</ref>

=== Criticism from Anglophone philosophers ===
Though Derrida addressed the [[American Philosophical Association]] on at least one occasion in 1988,<ref>{{Cite journal|first = Newton|last = Garver|author-link=Newton Garver |year = 1991|title = Derrida's language-games|volume = 10|pages = 187–98|doi = 10.1007/BF00141339|issue = 2|journal = Topoi|s2cid = 143791006}}</ref> and was highly regarded by some contemporary philosophers like [[Richard Rorty]], [[Alexander Nehamas]],<ref>"Truth and Consequences: How to Understand Jacques Derrida," ''The New Republic'' 197:14 (5 October 1987).</ref> and [[Stanley Cavell]], his work has been regarded by other analytic philosophers, such as [[John Searle]] and [[Willard Van Orman Quine]],<ref name="DUlisse">J. E. D'Ulisse, [http://www.newpartisan.com/home/derrida-1930-2004.html ''Derrida (1930–2004)''], ''New Partisan'', 24 December 2004. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160310180410/http://www.newpartisan.com/home/derrida-1930-2004.html |date=10 March 2016}}</ref> as [[pseudophilosophy]] or [[sophistry]].

Some [[analytic philosopher]]s have in fact claimed, since at least the 1980s, that Derrida's work is "not philosophy". One of the main arguments they gave was alleging that Derrida's influence had not been on US philosophy departments but on literature and other [[humanities]] disciplines.<ref name="Lamont87" /><ref name="Hansson"/>

In his 1989 ''[[Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]]'', [[Richard Rorty]] argues that Derrida (especially in his book, ''[[The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond]]'', one section of which is an experiment in fiction) 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.<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>

[[Roger Scruton]] wrote in 2004, "He's difficult to summarise because it's nonsense. He argues that the meaning of a sign is never revealed in the sign but deferred indefinitely and that a sign only means something by virtue of its difference from something else. For Derrida, there is no such thing as meaning – it always eludes us and therefore anything goes."<ref name="The Guardian">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/oct/12/philosophy|title=Deconstructing Jacques|date=12 October 2004|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref>

On Derrida's scholarship and writing style, [[Noam Chomsky]] wrote "I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted."<ref>{{cite web |last=Chomsky |first=Noam |title=Postmodernism? |website=ZCommunications |url=http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/postmodernism-by-noam-chomsky/ |access-date=27 September 2014 |date=August 2012}}</ref>

[[Paul R. Gross]] and [[Norman Levitt]] also criticized his work for misusing scientific terms and concepts in ''[[Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science]]'' (1994).<ref>Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).</ref>

Three quarrels (or disputes) in particular went out of academic circles and received international mass media coverage: the 1972–88 quarrel with John Searle, the analytic philosophers' pressures on Cambridge University not to award Derrida an honorary degree, and a dispute with Richard Wolin and the NYRB.

==== Searle–Derrida debate<!-- no longer linked from 'John Searle'--> ====
{{main|Searle–Derrida debate}}

==== Cambridge honorary doctorate ====
In 1992 some academics at [[Cambridge University]], mostly not from the philosophy faculty, proposed that Derrida be awarded an honorary doctorate. This was opposed by, among others, the university's Professor of Philosophy [[David Hugh Mellor|Hugh Mellor]]. Eighteen other philosophers from US, Austrian, Australian, French, Polish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish, and British institutions, including [[Barry Smith (academic and ontologist)|Barry Smith]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[David Malet Armstrong|David Armstrong]], [[Ruth Barcan Marcus]], and [[René Thom]], then sent a letter to Cambridge claiming that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour"<!-- original spelling --> and describing Derrida's philosophy as being composed of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the [[Dada]]ists". The letter concluded that:

{{blockquote|... where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial. 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 name="BarrySmithEtAl">Barry Smith et al., "Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University," ''The Times'' [London], 9 May 1992 [http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/Derrida_Letter.htm].</ref>}}

In the end the protesters were outnumbered—336 votes to 204—when Cambridge put the motion to a formal ballot;<ref>John Rawlings (1999) [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/ Presidential Lectures: Jacques Derrida: Introduction] at [[Stanford University]]</ref> though almost all of those who proposed Derrida and who voted in favour were not from the philosophy faculty.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Richmond |first1=Sarah|title=Derrida and Analytical Philosophy: Speech Acts and their Force|journal=European Journal of Philosophy |date=April 1996 |volume=4|issue=1|pages=38–62 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0378.1996.tb00064.x}}</ref> Hugh Mellor continued to find the award undeserved, explaining: "He is a mediocre, unoriginal philosopher — he is not even interestingly bad".<ref>{{cite web |title=Professor Hugh Mellor obituary |work=[[The Times]] |date=29 June 2020 |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/professor-hugh-mellor-obituary-hft23p3d0 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Derrida suggested in an interview that part of the reason for the attacks on his work was that it questioned and modified "the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene". To answer a question about the "exceptional violence", the compulsive "ferocity", and the "exaggeration" of the "attacks", he would say that these critics organize and practice in his case "a sort of obsessive personality cult that philosophers should know how to question and above all to moderate".<ref name="Derrida 1995pp409-413">{{cite book| last1=Derrida| first1=Jacques| title=Points ...: Interviews, 1974–1994| edition=1st| year=1995| publisher=Stanford University Press| location=New York| isbn=978-0810103979| chapter='Honoris Causa: "This is also very funny{{"'}}| pages=409–413| chapter-url=http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/interviews.html#cambridge}}{{blockquote |If it were only a question of "my" work, of the particular or isolated research of one individual, this wouldn't happen. Indeed, the violence of these denunciations derives from the fact that the work accused is part of a whole ongoing process. What is unfolding here, like the resistance it necessarily arouses, can't be limited to a personal "oeuvre," nor to a discipline, nor even to the academic institution. Nor in particular to a generation: it's often the active involvement of students and younger teachers which makes certain of our colleagues nervous to the point that they lose their sense of moderation and of the academic rules they invoke when they attack me and my work.<br/><br/>If this work seems so threatening to them, this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange, incomprehensible or exotic (which would allow them to dispose of it easily), but as I myself hope, and as they believe more than they admit, competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction in its re-examination of the fundamental norms and premises of a number of dominant discourses, the principles underlying many of their evaluations, the structures of academic institutions, and the research that goes on within them. What this kind of questioning does is modify the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize the university scene.&nbsp;...<br/><br/>In short, to answer your question about the "exceptional violence," the compulsive "ferocity," and the "exaggeration" of the "attacks," I would say that these critics organize and practice in my case a sort of obsessive personality cult which philosophers should know how to question and above all to moderate.}}</ref>

====Dispute with Richard Wolin and the ''NYRB''====
[[Richard Wolin]] has argued since 1991 that Derrida's work, as well as that of Derrida's major inspirations (e.g., Bataille, Blanchot, Levinas, 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 name="Wolin93Preface">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>

In 1991, 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 the Heideggerian scholar [[Thomas Sheehan (academic)|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.<ref name="NYRBLetters">{{cite magazine |author=Thomas Sheehan |date=February 11, 1993 |title='L'affaire Derrida' |magazine=The New York Review |department=Letters |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2658}} and {{cite magazine |author=Helene Cixous |display-authors=etal |date=April 22, 1993 |title='L'Affaire Derrida': Yet Another Exchange |magazine=The New York Review |department=Letters |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2591}}</ref> Derrida in turn responded 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...]]''.<ref name="DerridaOnNYRB">Derrida, "The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company do Business)", published in the book ''[[Points...]]'' (1995; see the footnote about {{ISBN|0-226-14314-7}}, [[Jacques Derrida bibliography|here]]) (see also the [1992] French version ''[[Points de suspension: entretiens]]'' ({{ISBN|0-8047-2488-1}}) [[Jacques Derrida bibliography|there]]).</ref>

Twenty-four academics, belonging to different schools and groups – often in disagreement with each other and with deconstruction – signed a letter addressed to ''The New York Review of Books'', in which they expressed their indignation for the magazine's behaviour as well as that of Sheenan and Wolin.<ref name="PointsP434">''Points'', p. 434.</ref>

=== Critical obituaries ===
Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in ''[[The New York Times]]'',<ref name="obituary"/> ''[[The Economist]]'',<ref>{{cite news |author=Anabell Guerrero Mendez |department=Obituary |title=Jacques Derrida, French intellectual, died on October 8th, aged 74 |newspaper=The Economist |date=21 October 2004 |url=http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3308320}}</ref> and ''[[The Independent]]''.<ref>{{cite web |author=Johann Hari |date=13 October 2004 |title=Why I won't be mourning Derrida |work=The Independent |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/why-i-won-t-be-mourning-derrida-543574.html}}</ref> The magazine ''[[The Nation]]'' responded to the ''New York Times'' obituary saying that "even though American papers had scorned and trivialized Derrida before, the tone seemed particularly caustic".<ref name="NationObituaries">{{cite web |author=Ross Benjamin |date=24 November 2004 |url=http://www.thenation.com/article/hostile-obituary-derrida |title=Hostile Obituary for Derrida |work=[[The Nation]]}}</ref><ref name="Culler08">{{cite interview |author=[[Jonathan Culler]] |interviewer=Paul Sawyer |url=https://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan08/JonathanCuller.html |title=Why deconstruction still matters: A conversation with Jonathan Culler |work=The Cornell Chronicle |date=24 January 2008 |url-status=deviated |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080904224147/http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan08/JonathanCuller.html |archive-date=2008-09-04}}</ref> A second obituary by deconstruction scholar and Derrida's friend [[Mark C. Taylor (philosopher)|Mark C. Taylor]] was published by the ''Times'' a few days after the first one.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Taylor|first1=Mark C.|title=What Derrida Really Meant|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/what-derrida-really-meant.html|work=The New York Times|accessdate=7 January 2024|date=14 October 2004}}</ref>

== Major works ==
{{Main|Jacques Derrida bibliography}}

== See also ==
* [[Gadamer–Derrida debate]]
* [[Difference (poststructuralism)]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

== Works cited ==
*[[Geoffrey Bennington]] (1991). [https://books.google.com/books?id=kL4AdWgYe6AC ''Jacques Derrida''], University of Chicago Press. Section ''Curriculum vitae'', pp.&nbsp;325–36. [http://lebonusage.over-blog.com/article-30028638.html Excerpts]. {{ISBN|9780226042626}}
*[[John D. Caputo|Caputo, John D.]] (ed.) (1997). ''Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida''. New York: Fordham University Press. Transcript (which is also available {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901145759/http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/vill1.html |date=1 September 2006 |title=here}}) of the Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida at [[Villanova University]], 3 October 1994. With commentary by Caputo.
* [[Hélène Cixous|Cixous, Hélène]] (2001). ''Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint'' (English edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). {{OCLC|1025139739 |265430083 |448343513 |1036830179}}
*Dal Bo, Federico ''Deconstructing the Talmud'' Routledge 2019. {{ISBN|978-1138208223}}
*Derrida (1967): interview with Henri Ronse, republished in ''[[Positions (book)|Positions]]'' (English edition, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
*Derrida (1971): interview with Guy Scarpetta, republished in ''Positions'' (English edition, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
*Derrida (1976). ''Where a Teaching Body Begins and How It Ends'', republished in ''[[Who's Afraid of Philosophy?]]''.
*Derrida (1988). ''Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion'', published in the English translation of ''[[Limited Inc.]]''
*Derrida (1989). ''This Strange Institution Called Literature'', interview published in ''[[Acts of Literature]]'' (1991), pp.&nbsp;33–75
*Derrida (1990). ''Once Again from the Top: Of the Right to Philosophy'', interview with Robert Maggiori for ''[[Libération]]'', 15 November 1990, republished in ''[[Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994]]'' (1995).
*Derrida (1991). "A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking", interview with Francois Ewald for ''Le Magazine Litteraire'', March 1991, republished in ''[[Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994]]'' (1995).
*Derrida (1992). Derrida's interview in ''The Cambridge Review'' 113, October 1992. Reprinted in ''Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994'' Stanford University Press (1995) and retitled as ''Honoris Causa'': "This is ''also'' extremely funny," pp.&nbsp;399–421. [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/interviews.html#cambridge Excerpt].
*Derrida (1993). ''[[Specters of Marx]]''.
*Derrida ''et al.'' (1994): {{cite web |type=Roundtable Discussion |title=Des humanités et de la discipline philosophique"/"Of the Humanities and Philosophical Disciplines |url=http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/vol6/derrida.html |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20191025085629/http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/vol6/derrida.html |archive-date=25 October 2019}} ''Surfaces'' Vol. VI.108 (v.1.0A – 16 August 1996) – {{ISSN|1188-2492}}. Jacques Derrida's contribution to the first International Conference for Humanistic Discourses, was held in April, 1994. Later republished in ''[[Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy]]'' (2002).
*Derrida and Ferraris (1997). "I Have a Taste for Secret", 1993–1995 conversations with [[Maurizio Ferraris]] and Giorgio Vattimo, in Derrida and Ferraris (2001) [https://books.google.com/books?id=QzSowXaPwBsC ''A Taste for the Secret''], translated by Giacomo Donis.
*Derrida (1997): interview ''Les Intellectuels: tentative de définition par eux-mêmes. Enquête'', published in a special number of journal ''Lignes'', 32 (1997): 57–68, republished in [http://www.editions-galilee.fr/f/index.php?sp=liv&livre_id=2796 ''Papier Machine''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210617224132/http://www.editions-galilee.fr/f/index.php?sp=liv&livre_id=2796 |date=17 June 2021 }} (2001), and translated into English as ''Intellectuals. Attempt at Definition by Themselves. Survey'', in Derrida (2005) ''Paper machine''.
*Derrida (2002): Q&A session at [[Film Forum]], New York City, 23 October 2002, transcript by Gil Kofman. Published in Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman, Jacques Derrida (2005). [https://books.google.com/books?id=ICD8tI-LSOUC ''Derrida: screenplay and essays on the film''].
*[[Gerald Graff|Graff, Gerald]] (1993). [https://books.google.com/books?id=2EwLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA680 ''Is Reason in Trouble?''] in ''[[Proc. Am. Philos. Soc.]]'', 137, no. 4, 1993, pp.&nbsp;680–88.
*[[Lawrence D. Kritzman|Kritzman, Lawrence]] (2005). [https://books.google.com/books?id=bREQibN9i-sC ''The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought''], Columbia University Press.
*[[Louis H. Mackey|Mackey, Louis]] (1984) with a reply by [[John Searle|Searle]]. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1984/feb/02/an-exchange-on-deconstruction/ ''An Exchange on Deconstruction''], in ''[[New York Review of Books]]'', 2 February 1984.
*[[Nader El-Bizri|El-Bizri, Nader]], "Qui-êtes vous [[Khôra]]?: Receiving [[Plato]]'s Timaeus", ''Existentia Meletai-Sophias'' 11 (2001), pp.&nbsp;473–490.
*[[Nader El-Bizri|El-Bizri, Nader]], "''ON KAI KHORA'': Situating [[Heidegger]] between the ''[[Sophist]]'' and the ''[[Timaeus (dialogue)|Timaeus]]''," ''Studia Phaenomenologica'' 4 (2004), pp.&nbsp;73–98.
*Peeters, Benoît (2013). [https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ ''Derrida: A Biography'']. Translated by Andrew Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press. {{ISBN|978-0-7456-6302-9}} {{OCLC|980688411|844437566|818721033}}
*[[Jason Powell|Powell, Jason]] (2006). [https://books.google.com/books?id=sbhlgspwVwMC ''Jacques Derrida: A Biography'']. London and New York: Continuum.
*[[Mark Poster|Poster, Mark]] (1988). [https://books.google.com/books?id=-OnWAAAAMAAJ ''Critical theory and poststructuralism: in search of a context''], section ''Introduction: Theory and the problem of Context''.
*[[Mark Poster|Poster, Mark]] (2010). [http://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/viewFile/11931/8817 ''McLuhan and the Cultural Theory of Media''], ''MediaTropes eJournal'', Vol. II, No. 2 (2010): 1–18.
*[[John Searle|Searle]] (1983). [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1983/oct/27/the-word-turned-upside-down/ ''The Word Turned Upside Down''], in ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', October 1983.
*[[John Searle|Searle]] (2000). [http://www.reason.com/news/show/27599.html ''Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle'']. ''Reason.com''. February 2000 issue. Retrieved 30 August 2010.

== Further reading ==
*Salmon, Peter (2020) ''An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida''. London: Verso. {{ISBN|9781788732802}}

=== Introductory works ===
* {{Cite Q|Q122766403}}
*Adleman, Dan (2010) "Deconstricting Derridean Genre Theory" ([http://www.improvcommunity.ca/sites/improvcommunity.ca/files/research_collection/657/Coleman_Derrida_Genre.pdf PDF] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128021934/http://www.improvcommunity.ca/sites/improvcommunity.ca/files/research_collection/657/Coleman_Derrida_Genre.pdf |date=28 January 2024 }})
*Descombes, Vincent (1980) ''Modern French Philosophy''.
*Deutscher, Penelope (2006) ''How to Read Derrida'' ({{ISBN|978-0-393-32879-0}}).
* [[Mark Dooley]] and Liam Kavanagh (2007) ''The Philosophy of Derrida'', London: Acumen Press, 2006; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
*[[Fredric Jameson|Jameson, Fredric]] (1972) ''The Prison-House of Language''.
*Lentricchia, Frank (1980) ''After the New Criticism''.
*Moati Raoul (2009), Derrida/Searle, déconstruction et language ordinaire
*[[Christopher Norris (critic)|Norris, Christopher]] (1987) ''Derrida'' ({{ISBN|0-674-19823-9}}).
*Thomas, Michael (2006) ''[[The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation]]''.
*[[Christopher Wise|Wise, Christopher]] (2009) ''Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East''.

=== Other works ===
*[[Giorgio Agamben|Agamben, Giorgio.]] "Pardes: The Writing of Potentiality," in Giorgio Agamben, ''Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy'', ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. 205–19.
*Beardsworth, Richard, ''Derrida and the Political'' ({{ISBN|0-415-10967-1}}).
* [[Simon Critchley|Critchley, Simon]], {{cite book |date=2014 |title=The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, 3rd Edition |url=http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748689323 |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=9780748689323}}
*[[Paul de Man|de Man, Paul]], "The Rhetoric of Blindness: Jacques Derrida's Reading of Rousseau," in Paul de Man, ''Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism'', second edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. 102–41.
* Fabbri, Lorenzo. [https://www.academia.edu/1870908/Chronotopologies_of_the_Exception_Agamben_and_Derrida_before_the_Camps "Chronotopologies of the Exception. Agamben and Derrida before the Camps"], "Diacritics", Volume 39, Number 3 (2009): 77–95.
*[[Michel Foucault|Foucault, Michel]], "My Body, This Paper, This Fire," in Michel Foucault, ''History of Madness'', ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, London: Routledge, 2006. 550–74.
* Fradet, Pierre-Alexandre, ''Derrida-Bergson. Sur l'immédiateté'', [[Éditions Hermann|Hermann]], Paris, coll. "Hermann Philosophie", 2014. {{ISBN|9782705688318}}
*[[Rodolphe Gasché|Gasché, Rodolphe]], ''Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida''.
*Goldschmit, Marc, ''Une langue à venir. Derrida, l'écriture hyperbolique'' Paris, Lignes et Manifeste, 2006. {{ISBN|2-84938-058-X}}
*[[Jürgen Habermas|Habermas, Jürgen]], "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida's Critique of Phonocentrism," in Jürgen Habermas, ''The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures'', trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. 161–84.
*[[Martin Hägglund|Hägglund, Martin]], ''Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life'', Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.
*[[Werner Hamacher|Hamacher, Werner]], ''Lingua amissa'', Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila editores, 2012.
*{{Cite journal |last=Kierans |first=Kenneth |title=Beyond Deconstruction |journal=[[Animus (journal)|Animus]] |year=1997 |volume=2 |issn=1209-0689 |url=http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume%202/kierans1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2011 |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304003733/http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume%202/kierans1.pdf |url-status=dead }}
*[[Mario Kopić|Kopić, Mario]], ''Izazovi post-metafizike'', Sremski Karlovci – Novi Sad: Izdavačka knjižarnica, 2007. ({{ISBN|978-86-7543-120-6}})
*[[Mario Kopić|Kopić, Mario]], ''Nezacjeljiva rana svijeta'', Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 2007. ({{ISBN|978-953-249-035-0}})
*[[John Llewelyn|Llewelyn, John]], ''Derrida on the Threshold of Sense'', London: Macmillan, 1986.
*Llewelyn, John, ''Appositions – of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
*Llewelyn, John, ''Margins of Religion: Between Kierkegaard and Derrida'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
* [[Louis H. Mackey|Mackey, Louis]], "Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Deconstructive Strategies in Theology," in ''Anglican Theological Review, Volume LXV, Number 3'', July 1983. 255–272.
* [[Louis H. Mackey|Mackey, Louis]], "A Nicer Knowledge of Belief" in Louis Mackey, ''An Ancient Quarrel Continued: The Troubled Marriage of Philosophy and Literature'', Lanham, University Press of America, 2002. 219–240 ({{ISBN|978-0761822677}}).
*[[Robert Magliola|Magliola, Robert]], ''Derrida on the Mend'', Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1984; 1986; rpt. 2000 ({{ISBN|0-911198-69-5}}). (Initiated what has become a very active area of study in Buddhology and comparative philosophy, the comparison of Derridean deconstruction and Buddhist philosophy, especially Madhyamikan and Zen Buddhist philosophy.)
*[[Robert Magliola|Magliola, Robert]], ''On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture'', Atlanta: Scholars P, American Academy of Religion, 1997; Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000 ({{ISBN|0-7885-0296-4}}). (Further develops comparison of Derridean thought and Buddhism.)
*[[Michael Marder|Marder, Michael]], [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802098924 ''The Event of the Thing: Derrida's Post-Deconstructive Realism''], Toronto: Toronto UP, 2009. ({{ISBN|0-8020-9892-4}})
*[[J. Hillis Miller|Miller, J. Hillis]], ''For Derrida'', New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.
*[[Chantal Mouffe|Mouffe, Chantal]] (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Pragmatism'', with essays by [[Simon Critchley]], [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[Richard Rorty]], and Derrida.
*Park, Jin Y., ed., ''Buddhisms and Deconstructions'', Lanham: Rowland and Littlefield, 2006 ({{ISBN|978-0-7425-3418-6}}; {{ISBN|0-7425-3418-9}}). (Several of the collected papers specifically treat Derrida and Buddhist thought.)
*Rapaport, Herman, ''Later Derrida'' ({{ISBN|0-415-94269-1}}).
* [[Richard Rorty|Rorty, Richard]], "From Ironist Theory to Private Allusions: Derrida," in Richard Rorty, ''Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 121–37.
*[[Stephen David Ross|Ross, Stephen David]], ''Betraying Derrida, for Life'', Atropos Press, 2013.
* [[Elisabeth Roudinesco|Roudinesco, Elisabeth]], ''Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2008.
* Royle, Nicholas, ''Jacques Derrida'', 2003.
*[[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.
*{{Cite book|author=Sallis, John|title=The Verge of Philosophy|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-226-73431-6|author-link= John Sallis}}
*Salvioli, Marco, ''Il Tempo e le Parole. Ricoeur e Derrida a "margine" della fenomenologia'', ESD, Bologna 2006.
*[[James K. A. Smith|Smith, James K. A.]], ''Jacques Derrida: Live Theory''.
*Sprinker, Michael, ed. ''Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx'', London and New York: Verso, 1999; rpt. 2008. (Includes Derrida's reply, "Marx & Sons.")
*[[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'', Wiley-Blackwell, 1992.
*Zlomislic, Marko, ''Jacques Derrida's Aporetic Ethics'', Lexington Books, 2004.

== External links ==
{{Commons category|Jacques Derrida}}
{{Wikiquote|Jacques Derrida}}
* [https://egs.edu/biography/jacques-derrida/ Jacques Derrida] at [[The European Graduate School]]
* Leonard Lawlor. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/ Entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
* Gerry Coulter. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150321145951/http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_1/derrida.htm Passings: Taking Derrida Seriously]. Volume 2, Number 1, January 2005
* John Rawlings. [http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/ ''Jacques Derrida''] Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts
* Jean-Michel Rabaté. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030503001022/http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/jacques_derrida.html |date=3 May 2003 |title=Derrida}} Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory.
* Eddie Yeghiayan. {{webarchive |url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20011115152107/http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~scctr/wellek/jacques.html |date=15 November 2001 |title=''Books and contributions to books''}}, Bibliography and translations list
* [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf3q2nb26c Guide to the Jacques Derrida Papers.] Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
* [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0n39q6th Guide to the Saffa Fathy Video Recordings of Jacques Derrida Lectures.] Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
* [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8z60mrk Guide to the Jacques Derrida Listserv Collection.] Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
* [[Mario Perniola]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20160414175449/http://www.marioperniola.it/site/dettagliotext.asp?idtexts=150 ''Remembering Derrida''], in "SubStance" (University of California), 2005, n.1, issue 106.
* [[Rick Roderick]], [http://rickroderick.org/307-derrida-and-the-ends-of-man-1993/''Derrida and the Ends of Man''], in "The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the 20th Century (1993)" (University of Texas, Austin).

{{Jacques Derrida}}
{{philosophy of language}}
{{continental philosophy}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Derrida, Jacques}}
[[Category:Jacques Derrida| ]]
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