Jacques Derrida

French philosopher and scholar

• Born: July 15, 1930
• Birthplace: El Biar, Algeria
• Died: October 8, 2004
• Place of death: Paris, France

Derrida was the principal exponent of grammatology, a writing-centered theory of language and of the associated critical practice known as deconstruction. As one of the leading figures in poststructuralism and postmodernism, he argued forcefully against philosophical, scientific, and religious efforts to institutionalize some preferred system of meanings as “truth.”

Early Life

Jacques Derrida (zhahk dehr-ree-dah) was born in El Biar, a community near Algiers, Algeria, of Sephardic Jewish parents. One of his earliest and most frightening memories was of the persecution directed against Jews in the period preceding the French-Algerian War. His anxiety in the face of mounting racial tension was heightened after the allied victory in World War II, when so-called racial laws were enacted in Algeria. These laws affected him directly when he was expelled from grammar school because of his race. In 1945, he was enrolled at a Jewish lycée but refused to attend classes for a year because of the growing racial and ethnic unrest. Despite the obstacles, he managed to complete his baccalauréat in 1948.

Near the completion of his studies at the lycée, Derrida became interested in French existential philosophy, particularly in the political engagement of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Until then soccer engaged much of his attention, and he had hoped to become a professional player. In 1949 he moved to Paris, hoping to do philosophical research on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, among others. However, he failed in his first attempt to pass the entrance exam for the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and studied instead at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1952, after he passed the exam to enter ENS, he began his studies with such luminaries as Michel Foucault and Jean Hyppolite.

In 1954, Derrida produced his first academic disquisition as his mémoir (thesis), Le probléme de la gnése dans la philosophie de Husserl (pb. 1990; The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, 2003). His philosophical studies were distinguished enough to earn for him a one-year visiting scholarship at Harvard University in 1956, which marked the beginning of his fruitful association with the American intellectual community.

Around this time Derrida had become disillusioned with structuralism and phenomenology, the two dominant contemporary philosophical alternatives in the continental tradition. While teaching at the Sorbonne between 1960 and 1964, he developed a critical vocabulary from his meditations on literary theory, which he would later use to counter structuralism and phenomenology. At the same time he became associated with the avant-garde Tel Quel group of intellectual theorists centered in Paris.

Life’s Work

Beginning in the mid-1960’s, Derrida’s work focused on dismantling the deeply entrenched philosophical tradition of logocentrism. According to Derrida, common to the epistemic paradigms of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy is the belief that the rational subject is capable of discovering timeless, universal truths. With appropriate precautions against the influence of prejudice and presuppositions, the logocentric inquirer is purportedly in a position to discover the essential nature or meaning (the logos) of things.

Derrida developed “deconstruction” as a method to counter logocentrism. To “deconstruct” a text is to undermine its foundation by revealing the suppressed weaknesses and uncertainties that, despite the suppression, are present in the “margins,” that is, in the meaningful interstices one finds “between the lines” of a text. According to Derrida, the margins of a text are integral parts of the text itself, rich in unintended meanings. The margins of both structuralist and phenomenological writings, for example, reveal the hidden weaknesses of the respective theories.

In 1966, Derrida burst upon the American intellectual scene with his lecture “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” delivered at Johns Hopkins University. Previewed as a sympathetic introduction to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropology, the lecture instead announced the defeat of structuralism. On the question of Lévi-Strauss’s theory, which fixes meaning by positing a stable structural framework, Derrida “decenters” the alleged fixity by revealing that the play of signifiers has led to the positing of the structure, thus inverting the hierarchical arrangement between structure and the play of signifiers. The published version of this lecture remains the clearest illustration of Derrida’s decentering strategy and one of the most incisive critiques of structuralism available. Along with Derrida’s De la grammatologie (1967; Of Grammatology , 1976), which appeared the following year, the essay provided the impetus for the poststructuralist movement.

One key to understanding Derrida’s writings is to appreciate the subtlety of his objections to structuralism. His argument should not be seen as antistructuralist but, rather, as hyper- or superstructuralist. Derrida outdoes structuralism and undoes it at the same time by exposing implications that were always already present in its earliest theoretical formulations. Most significantly, he exploits the central tenet of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics, according to which meaning is a function of the opposition or difference within a system of signifiers rather than a function of reference to something outside the system (to a “transcendental signified”). Whereas Saussure balked at admitting the ultimate implications of his thinking, Derrida recognized that Saussure’s semantic theory allows one to dispense with reference to extralinguistic entities.

The year 1967 was pivotal in Derrida’s career. In that year he published three important philosophical works: La Voix et le phénomène (1967; Speech and Phenomena , 1973), Of Grammatology, and L’Écriture et la différence (1967; Writing and Difference , 1978). The first is a sustained attack on the “phonocentrism” at the heart of Husserl’s phenomenology. A phonocentric theory privileges speech, contending that the spoken word is unproblematically connected to mental representations or meanings. Deriving from Aristotle and finding support in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings on language, this theory holds that there is a natural unity of sound and sense, since the meaning of speech is intimately bound to the consciousness of the speaker. Phonocentrism, according to Derrida, serves logocentrism by tying meaning to that which is present to the consciousness of the speaker. According to phonocentrism, writing is a mere shadow of speech, at one remove from meaning. Derrida’s critique of Husserl calls for a reappraisal of any semantic theory that seeks meaning in extralinguistic entities and for an alternative theory that eschews the “metaphysics of presence.” In his confrontation with phenomenology, Derrida’s aim was to reveal the absence of presence, that is, the absence of meanings immediately accessible to consciousness.

As Saussure had demonstrated, there is an alternative semantic theory that does not depend on reference to transcendental signifieds. The second and third of Derrida’s books published in 1967 make this alternative explicit. Though he is reluctant to admit it, grammatology is the theory that informs the practice of deconstruction. (His reluctance comes from the recognition that deconstruction has itself become a doctrine, much to his chagrin. According to Derrida, his theory should be constantly “under erasure,” present only as a critical tool and not as a new “truth.”) In Of Grammatology, sometimes ironically called the bible of deconstruction, Derrida goes so far as to claim that writing is prior to speech, that the latter is a mere shadow of the former. The thesis that writing, as the most perspicuous example of a signifying system in which meaning arises from the difference among signifiers, can play an explanatory role in understanding all signification, Derrida calls “arche-writing.” Accordingly, signifying systems as diverse as choreography, music, sculpture, painting, and politics can be viewed as texts.

In the course of analyses of the works of Husserl, de Saussure, Heidegger, Rousseau, Hegel, Foucault, René Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Antonin Artaud, and Lévi-Strauss, among others, Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference develop two other central concepts of Derrida’s theory. First, différance, spelled with an a instead of an e, is a French neologism combining the verbs “to differ” and “to defer.” Différance, which can only be recognized in writing, since its pronunciation is identical in French to that of différence, indicates both the unbridgeable gap between the signifier and the signified and the indefinite postponement of the moment when meaning can finally be established. Both aspects of différance are related to the notion of the trace. For Derrida, a trace is a sign of something having gone before, giving the impression that it is standing in for something more substantial or real, that is, for a signified. When one tries to track a sign to a signified, however, all that one can find is the trace of another signifier located where the signified was presumed to be.

Derrida’s deconstructive strategies are evident in his treatments of such bipolar oppositions as philosophy/literature, speaking/writing, and structure/freeplay. Regarding the interpretations of texts, one of the most important oppositions is between “origin” and “supplement.” In his criticism of Rousseau’s theory of language, Derrida argues that a sign always has greater meaning than the author intended. He rejects the thesis that the text possesses essential or original properties in contrast to the supplemental constructions offered by interpreters. He maintains that the allegedly supplemental meaning was always already in the original text, thus obliterating a distinction that would tend to reintroduce questions about the truth or correctness of interpretations.

The range of targets for Derrida’s deconstruction was not limited to structuralism and phenomenology. In general, any position that aspires to global theoretical closure (as epitomized by metaphysics, science, and religion), thereby obstructing the generation of alternative meanings, invites deconstruction. Complementing the poststructuralist strand of Derrida’s thinking, his attempt to subvert the repressive, totalizing tendencies of “ontotheology” played a major role in the postmodernist struggle against theoretical hegemony.

His critical vocabulary essentially intact in 1967, Derrida’s later works are by and large further elaborations of these ideas for example, La Dissémination (1972; Dissemination, 1981) and Marges de la philosophie (1972; Margins of Philosophy, 1982) or applications to particular fields, such as La Vérité en peinture (1978; Truth in Painting, 1987). Having argued that the pursuit of truth, which distinguishes philosophy and science from such disciplines as literature, is a mere pretension of logocentrism, Derrida could not consistently maintain a firm distinction between philosophy and literature. His writings following 1967 had therefore become increasingly literary. In particular, Glas (1974; English translation, 1986) and La Carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-déla (1980; The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, 1987) are on the borderline between philosophy and literature. For readers accustomed to rigid boundaries, his later works are frustrating, leading some critics to doubt his seriousness. When viewed in the overall context of his writings, however, Derrida’s crossing of boundaries is not surprising, nor is his attention to margins, even (particularly) the margins of his own work.

After 1972, Derrida divided his teaching between the École Normale Supérieure in France and such American institutions as Johns Hopkins University, where he became a professor of humanities in 1986, Yale University, New York University, the New School for Social Research, and the University of California, Irvine. In 1982 he helped establish the Collège International de Philosophie with François Châtelet, an institute for advanced philosophical research, and served as its first president. At the same time he published, on average, one book per year and traveled widely. In 1983 he became a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, a position he held until his death in 2004.

In the mid-1990’s, Derrida took an active interest in politics, ethics, and religion. He published Spectres de Marx in 1993 (Specters of Marx, 1994) and Politiques de l’amitié in 1994 (Politics of Friendship, 1997). Moreover, he publicly endorsed the presidential campaign of Lionel Jospin in 1995. He actively campaigned for a lycée curriculum that includes the study of philosophy and against what he regards as repressive measures in education. Through his teaching in the United States, his influence spread, primarily in the field of literary criticism and also in fields such as political theory, art theory, cultural studies, and history. Despite the hostile initial reception that Derrida received, the importance of his writings has been recognized by the philosophical community as well. Furthermore, he joined efforts against apartheid in South Africa and the Vietnam War and defended the cause of Algerian immigrants in France and of Czech dissidents.

Derrida married Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston in 1957. With her he had two sons, Pierre (b. 1963) and Jean (b. 1967). The mother of his third son, Daniel (b. 1984), was Sylviane Agacinski, a French philosopher who later married Jospin. Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2002. He died in Paris on October 8, 2004.

Derrida’s career brought him many honors, some controversial, and included honorary doctorates from Cambridge University, Columbia University, the New School, the University of Essex, the University of Leuven in Belgium, and Williams College. He also gained membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2001 he received the Adorno-Preis from the University of Frankfurt and was considered for the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Significance

Beginning with his argument against Husserl’s phenomenology and his rereading of Saussure’s structuralism, Derrida was a forceful critic of the logocentric tendency to repress systematically all meanings that fall outside institutionally preferred doctrine. In the skeptical tradition of Descartes, Michel Montaigne, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Derrida not only challenged particular doctrinal readings that make exclusive claims to truth but also cast suspicion on the notion of truth itself. Such notions as God, Being, presence, and structure, he persuasively argued, tend to foreclose interpretations in the name of “truth.”

Deconstruction is the strategy Derrida developed to combat attempts to establish hegemonic theoretical closure. Inspired by a theory of language that uses writing as the model for all signification, deconstruction subverts closure by showing that meaning, which is a function of intra- and intertextual opposition and difference, is in a state of constant expansion or “dissemination.” Repression is thus necessarily implicated in the quest for closure.

Derrida’s claim that the episteme shared by philosophy and science owes its dominance to the systematic repression of alternative viewpoints did not endear him to the scholarly community. The hostility with which his work was received is also a result of its difficulty in reading. His responses to calls for a definition to deconstruction often exacerbated the difficulty. In a 1993 lecture at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, for instance, he commented, “Needless to say, one more time, deconstruction, if there is such a thing, takes place as the experience of the impossible.”

In expressing his ideas, Derrida faced three formidable challenges. First, to subvert logocentrism he had to use the analytical and rhetorical tools available within the logocentric tradition. Second, given that he was constrained to work within the logocentric tradition, his critique also had to be a reflexive critique of the ideas informing the critique in progress. Third, he had to be sufficiently persuasive to support his positions while somehow preventing them from becoming part of the philosophical canon with their own preemptive claim to truth. Whereas he was successful in meeting the first two challenges, he largely failed to meet the third. Responses to his ideas have been sharply divided between outright rejection and, even worse, outright acceptance. His substantial influence on literary criticism and his growing influence on such disciplines as theology, art, history, feminist studies, cultural studies, and legal studies is paradoxically lamentable.

Bibliography

Adams, Hazard, and Leroy Searle. “Jacques Derrida.” In Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986. The editors of this volume provide a brief and thoughtful background analysis of Derrida’s main ideas by way of introduction to his famous essay, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” which appears in its entirety in this book, along with excerpts from some of his other works.

Cohen, Tom. Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Following a general introduction to Derrida by Cohen, twelve philosophers, beginning with Derrida himself, analyze his views on literature, gender, aesthetics, the arts, philosophy, ethics, politics, law, technology, history, and psychoanalysis. The essays provide concise, penetrating introductions to readers who have some acquaintance with modern thought. Includes a biographical chronology.

Kates, Joshua. Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of Deconstructionism. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005. Kates addresses basic questions about Derrida’s core thought through a historical evaluation of his formative years as a philosopher.

Lamont, Michele. “How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida.” American Journal of Sociology 93 (November, 1987): 584-622. This article examines the success of Derrida’s theories in France and the United States. Includes some biographical information as it relates to the explanation of how he gained his stature in philosophy. Contains an appendix that includes a list of secondary sources.

Norris, Christopher. Derrida. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. The clearest introduction of Derrida’s ideas. Norris represents his subject as a methodical philosopher, locating his ideas in the history of Western philosophy so that their meaning and value can be appreciated intertextually. The book also contains some valuable biographical information.

Norris, Christopher, and David Roden, eds. Jacques Derrida. 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2003. Volumes are thematically organized and provide “a systematic overview of the core conceptual vocabulary informing Deconstruction,” and identify “published works that most clearly and significantly discuss Derrida’s thought.” Highly recommended.

Powell, Jason. Derrida: A Biography. New York: Continuum, 2006. A complete biographical overview of Derrida’s thought, drawing on the philosopher’s own accounts of his life as well as the accounts of others. The book especially concentrates on Derrida’s struggle to establish deconstruction in the face of hostile criticism from prominent thinkers.

Salusinszky, Imre. “Jacques Derrida.” In Criticism in Society. New York: Methuen Press, 1987. A transcript of Derrida’s first interview in English, which focuses on the application of his insights into education. Derrida’s warmth and charm are evident in his conversation with Salusinszky. Accompanying the interview is a concise introduction to the cardinal insights of grammatology and deconstruction.

Stocker, Barry. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Derrida on Deconstruction. New York: Routledge, 2006. An excellent resource for studies of deconstruction. Outlines and discusses key themes in Derrida’s more popular works and examines the influence of his work on philosophy.