Derrida, Jacques

(b. 1930)

   French philosopher. Derrida was born in Algiers, but educated in Paris. He has taught at the école Normale Supérieure and the école des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales as well as at Yale, Cornell and the University of California.

   His best-known works include La Voix et Le Phénomène (‘Speech and Phe nomena’), L’écriture et la Différence (‘Writing and Difference’) and De La Grammatologie (‘Of Grammatology’), all published in 1967. These are collections of essays discussing the relationship between text and meaning. Despite their occasional obscurity, they have been immensely influential on the work of contemporary philosophers. In them Derrida recommends a strategy of interpretation, described as ‘deconstruction’, which has since become a fashionable technique in many academic disciplines. He went on to produce such works as Marges de la Philosophie (‘Margins of Philosophy’, 1970), La Dissemination (‘Dissemination’, 1972) and Glas (1974): in the last he contrasts the texts of Hegel concerning the heterosexual family with those of Genet on homosexual love. His other books include La Verité en Peinture (‘Truth in Painting’, 1978), La Carte Postale (‘The Post Card’, 1980), Memoires d’Aveugle (‘Memoirs of a Blind Man’, 1990) and Qu’est-ce que la Poésie? (‘What Is Poetry?’, 1991). As well as his concern with literary structures, Derrida is profoundly interested in the role of the Jew as the outlaw in European dialectic. He frequently draws on his Jewish heritage in his discussions.