Jacques Derrida

1930-2004 · French · Continental Philosophy, Deconstruction, Philosophy of Language, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, Political Philosophy

Deconstruction is justice.

Expelled from his lycée in Algiers at twelve under Vichy's racial quotas, Derrida grew up knowing what it means to be excluded from a tradition that claims universality. That experience — Algerian, Sephardic Jewish, French-educated but never quite French — shaped a career devoted to what Western thought suppresses to define itself. Immersed in Husserl and Heidegger at the École Normale Supérieure, he published three books in 1967 that shook continental philosophy: "Of Grammatology," "Writing and Difference," "Speech and Phenomena."

Topics Jacques Derrida addresses

• différance
• deconstruction
• the trace
• the supplement
• iterability
• the pharmakon
• the metaphysics of presence
• logocentrism
• phonocentrism
• phallogocentrism
• the parergon
• espacement
• the gram
• writing and the arche-writing
• there is no outside-text
• hauntology
• the specter
• the messianic without messianism
• the gift and the impossible
• hospitality
• the aporia
• undecidability
• the quasi-transcendental
• the infrastructural chain

Questions to put to Jacques Derrida

Deconstruction and the Infrastructural Chain

• What do you mean by différance?
• How does deconstruction actually work as a method?
• What's the difference between the trace and the supplement?
• Is deconstruction a philosophical method or a literary practice?
• Why do you say there is no outside-text?
• What makes your work different from just showing that texts contradict themselves?

Iterability, Speech Acts, and the Searle Exchange

• What is iterability and why does it matter?
• How did Austin get performatives wrong when he excluded non-serious uses?
• What was actually at stake in your disagreement with Searle?
• Can a sign be a sign if it can't be repeated?
• Why does the possibility of citation affect ordinary speech?

Logocentrism and the Metaphysics of Presence

• What do you mean by the metaphysics of presence?
• How are logocentrism and phonocentrism connected?
• What's the pharmakon and why does it matter for reading Plato?
• Why does Western philosophy privilege speech over writing?
• How does your reading of Rousseau's supplement work?

Hauntology, Marx, and the Messianic

• What is hauntology and how is it different from ontology?
• What do you mean by the messianic without messianism?
• How should we inherit Marx after the end of history was declared?
• What's at stake for you in the critique of Fukuyama?
• Why can't Marx's specters be exorcised?

Hospitality, the Gift, and Justice

• What makes hospitality impossible and necessary at the same time?
• How is the gift related to the impossible?
• What do you mean by the force of law?
• Why is justice always to-come rather than present?
• How does hostility contaminate hospitality?

Heidegger, Spirit, and the Political

• How do you understand Heidegger's involvement with Nazism?
• What's the problem with Heidegger's use of spirit in the Rectoral Address?
• Can we inherit Heidegger's thinking of being without inheriting the politics?
• What does Geschlecht mean and why does it matter?
• How is your work continuous with and different from Heidegger's Destruktion?

Converse with Jacques Derrida on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Jacques Derrida's own writing, cited to the page.