Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida has had an enormous impact

on intellectual life around the world. So much so that his work has been the
subject, in whole or in part, of more than 400 books. In the areas of philosophy
and literary criticism alone, Derrida has been cited more than 14,000 times in
journal articles over the past 17 years 1. He was recently featured in a story in
The New York Times. More than 500 US, British and Canadian dissertations
treat him and his writings as primary subjects. He came into prominence in
America with his critical approach or methodology or philosophy of
deconstruction, and it is this line of thought that continues to identify him.

Derrida's deconstructionist works are integrally related to the more general

phenomenon of postmodernism. Postmodernist theories and attitudes come in a
variety of forms. In the realm of social and political theory, what unites them --
from Foucault to Baudrillard, from Lyotard to Derrida and others -- is a challenge
to, and largely a rejection of, both the truth value and pragmatic capacity for
achieving justice or peace of the modern system of political and economic
institutions, as well as the very ways in which we know and act to explain and
understand ourselves. Especially in the latter theoretical and explanatory domain,
Derrida's deconstructionism is provocative, if not subversive, in questioning the
self-evidence, logic and non-judgmental character of dichotomies we live by,
such as legitimate/illegitimate, rational/irrational, fact/fiction, or
observation/imagination.

During the 1960s Derrida published several influential pieces in Tel Quel,
France's forum of leftist avant-garde theory. Among this group were not only
those mentioned above in relation to postmodernism, but also Bataille, Barthes,
Kristeva, and several others. He later distanced himself from Tel Quel.

He taught philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1960-1964 and the École Normale
Superieure from 1964-1984. He currently directs the École des Hautes Études en
Science Sociales in Paris. Since 1986 he has also been Professor of Philosophy,
French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine and
continues to lecture in academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Derrida is "perhaps the world's most famous philosopher -- if not the only famous
philosopher," in the words of Dinitia Smith, the talented and entertaining author of
the aforementioned New York Times feature "Philosopher Gamely in Defense of
His Ideas." Ms. Smith confided in the article, "A scholar ... warned against asking
him [Derrida] to define 'deconstruction,' the notoriously difficult and widely
influential method of inquiry he invented more than three decades ago. 'Make it
your last question,' the scholar counseled, because it sends deconstructionists
into "paroxysms of rage.'"
If Derrida and deconstruction can not be discussed one without the other, what
then is deconstruction? Definitions even vary, from a seven page-explanation to
a four page entry or an eleven page reference. How does Professor Derrida
himself define it? He says of course a very great deal in numerous writings as
well as in published interviews such as Deconstruction in a nutshell: a
conversation with Jacques Derrida. What Ms. Smith reported of their
conversation at the Polo Grill is the following:

"It is impossible to respond," Mr. Derrida said. "I can only do something which will
leave me unsatisfied." But after some prodding, he gave it a try anyway. "I often
describe deconstruction as something which happens. It's not purely linguistic,
involving text or books. You can deconstruct gestures, choreography. That's why
I enlarged the concept of text."

Mr. Derrida did not seem angry at having to define his philosophy at all; he was
even smiling. "Everything is a text; this is a text," he said, waving his arm at the
diners around him in the bland suburbanlike restaurant, blithely picking at their
lunches, completely unaware that they were being "deconstructed."

The name Derrida brings up controversies that would normally be reserved for
political figures. In 1992 at the ever proper Cambridge University, the granting of
an honorary degree to Derrida provoked an impassioned debate among the
dons. The end result was the unusual step of putting the issue to vote, the first rift
of its kind in twenty-nine years. It was settled by a 336-204 vote in Derrida's favor
(a veritable landslide victory in the context of normal politics).

And in such an atmosphere of keen debate and disagreements, parody is not

unknown. Stanford English Professor John L'Heureux, with deconstruction and
its critical-theoretical progeny in view, offered the reader this prospect of a brave
new academic world in his novel The Handmaid of Desire:

This department [The Department of Theory and Discourse] was his dream; it
would revolutionize university studies. It would include Comp Lit, Mod Thought,
and all the little language departments -- French, Russian, Spanish, you name it.
It would take on all written documents, equally with absolute indifference to the
author's reputation or the western canon or the nature of writing itself -- whether it
was Flaubert's Bovary or a 1950 tax form or a label on a Campbell's soup
can . . .-- and subject them all to the probing, thrusting, hard-breathing analysis of
the latest developments in metaphilosophical trans-literary theory. Whatever
those theories might be. Wherever they might lead.
However one values Derrida's writings and the philosophical positions and
intellectual traditions from which he proceeds, it would be wrongheaded to think
of him as an occupant of some "ivory tower". Derrida is the proverbial activist-
theorist, who, over the years, has fought for a number of political causes,
including the rights of Algerian immigrants in France, anti-apartheid, and the
rights of Czech Charter 77 dissidents. True to his own construction of the world
and his own autobiography, he has admitted few, if any, strict dichotomies in his
life. As he put it in another context, "I am applied Derrida."

1 Based on a search of the Arts and Humanities Citation Index.

By John Rawlings

©1999, Stanford University

Jacques Derrida pages edited by Stanford University curators: John Rawlings

(Humanities and Social Science Bibliographer, rawlings@sulmail.stanford.edu),
Tony Angiletta (Morrison Curator for the Social Sciences and Population Studies
tangilet@sulmail.stanford.edu), and Mary Jane Parrine (Curator for Romance
Languages Collections, parrine@leland.stanford.edu)