  |birth_place      = El Biar (Algiers), then French Algeria |death_date       =  |death_place      = Paris, France |school_tradition = Deconstruction, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenology |main_interests   = Philosophy of language Literary theory Ethics Ontology |notable_ideas    = Deconstruction Différance Phallogocentrism Metaphysics of presence |influences       = Plato Søren KierkegaardAlexandre Kojève Maurice Blanchot Antonin Artaud Martin Heidegger Roland Barthes Louis Althusser Georges BatailleEdmund Husserl Emmanuel Lévinas Friedrich Nietzsche Ferdinand de Saussure Sigmund Freud Karl Marx Claude Lévi-Strauss James Joyce Stéphane Mallarmé J.L. AustinKrantz, Susan ''[ What’s the Real Difference between Analytic and Continental Philosophy?]'' |influenced       = Paul de Man Bernard Stiegler Jean-Luc Nancy Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Ernesto Laclau Judith Butler Louis Althusser Peter Eisenman Edward Said Homi K. Bhabha Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak John Caputo Simon Critchley Mario Kopic Peter Sloterdijk Avital Ronell Catherine Malabou |signature        = |box_width        = }} '''Jacques Derrida''' (; ; July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction, his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy.Vincent B. Leitch ''Postmodernism: Local Effects, Global Flows'', SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), p .27. His prolific output of more than 40 published books, together with essays and public speaking, has had a significant impact upon the humanities, particularly on literary theory and continental philosophy. Perhaps Derrida's most quoted and famous assertion ever is the axial statement of his whole essay on Rousseau (part of his highly influential ''Of Grammatology'', 1967), &quot;there is nothing outside the text&quot; (''il n'y a pas de hors-texte''), meaning that there is nothing outside context. Critics of Derrida  have countless times quoted it as a slogan to characterize and stigmatize deconstruction.  Deconstruction has become associated with the attempt to expose and undermine the oppositions and paradoxes on which particular texts, philosophical and otherwise, are founded. He frequently called such paradoxes &quot;binary oppositions.&quot; Derrida's strategy involved explicating the historical roots of philosophical ideas, questioning the so-called &quot;metaphysics of presence&quot; that he sees as having dominated philosophy since the ancient Greeks, careful textual analysis, and attempting to undermine and subvert the paradoxes themselves.[ &quot;Derrida, Jacques&quot;]. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. January 12, 2010. Accessed August 11, 2010.  Derrida's work has had implications across many fields, including literature, architecture (in the form of deconstructivism), sociology, and cultural studies. Particularly in his later writings, he frequently addressed ethical and political themes, and his work influenced various activist and other political movements.Jonathan Kandell, &quot;[ Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74,&quot;] The New York Times, October 10, 2004 His widespread influence made him a well-known cultural figure, while his approach to philosophy and the purported difficulty of his work also made him a figure of some controversy.''Derrida''. Dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Zeitgeist Films, 2002.[ &quot;Jacques Derrida&quot;]. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. November 22, 2006. Accessed August 11, 2010. His work has been seen as a challenge to the unquestioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition and Western culture as a whole.  ==Life== Derrida was born on July 15, 1930, in El Biar (Algiers), then French Algeria, into a Sephardic Jewish family originally from Toledo that became French in 1870 when the Crémieux Decree granted full French citizenship   to the indigenous Jews of French colonial Algeria.&quot;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&quot;, ''[ Jacques Derrida The Last Interview]'', May 2003. He was the third of five children. His parents, Aimé Derrida (1896-1970)[ and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar (1901-1991) [ name=&quot;Bennington91p325&quot;&gt;Bennington (1991) p. 325&quot;Safar surname: occupational name from Arabic ''saffar'' which means ''worker in copper or brass''&quot;, [ The Safar surname]&quot; named him Jackie, though he would later adopt a more &quot;correct&quot; version of his first name when he moved to Paris.[ Obituary in ''The Guardian''], accessed August 2, 2007. His youth was spent in El-Biar, Algeria.  On the first day of the school year in 1942, Derrida was expelled from his lycée by French administrators implementing  anti-Semitic quotas set by the  Vichy government. 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  football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers such as Rousseau,  Nietzsche, and Gide, an instrument of revolt against the family and society:    His readings also included Camus and Sartre. On his first day at the École Normale Supérieure, Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends.  After visiting the  Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium, he completed his philosophy ''agrégation'' on Edmund Husserl. Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and he spent the 1956–7 academic year reading Joyce's ''Ulysses'' at the Widener Library.Caputo (1997), p. 25. In June 1957, he married the psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston.  During the Algerian War of Independence, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959.  Following the war, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the  Sorbonne, where he was assistant of Suzanne Bachelard (daughter of Gaston), Canguilhem, Paul Ricœur (who in these years coined the term ''School of suspicion'') and Jean Wahl.Bennington (1991) p.330 His wife, Marguerite, gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. In 1964, on the recommendation of Althusser and Jean Hyppolite, Derrida got a permanent teaching position at the École Normale Supérieure, which he kept until 1984. In 1965 Derrida began an association with the ''Tel Quel'' group of literary and philosophical theorists, which lasted for seven years.Powell (2006) p.58  Beginning with his 1966 lecture at Johns Hopkins University, [ &quot;Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences&quot;], his work assumed international prominence. 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 1977, he was among the intellectuals, with Foucault and Althusser, who signed the petition against age of consent laws.  He completed his ''Thèse d'État'' in 1980; the work was subsequently published in English translation as &quot;The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations.&quot; In 1983 Derrida collaborated with Ken McMullen on the 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 was director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. With François Châtelet and others he in 1983 co-founded the Collège international de philosophie (CIPH), an institution intended to provide a location for philosophical research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academy. He was elected as its first president.  In 1986 Derrida became Professor of the Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. UCI and the Derrida family are currently involved in a legal dispute regarding exactly what materials constitute his archive, part of which was informally bequeathed to the university.[ &quot;The Chronicle of Higher Education&quot;, July 20, 2007], accessed August 1, 2007. He 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.  He was awarded honorary doctorates by Cambridge University (1992), Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, the University of Essex, University of Leuven, Williams College and University of Silesia.  Derrida has often been criticized by academics, such as the analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine.J.E. D'Ulisse  ''[ Derrida (1930-2004)]'', ''New Partisan'' 12.24.2004 Quote: &quot;Academic conservatives attack Derrida for his position on objectivity ... W.V.O. Quine ... his status as a good Republican&quot; In 1992, a number of analytical philosophers from Cambridge University and external institutions tried to stop the granting of the degree,Barry Smith et al. ''[ Open letter against Derrida receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University]'' , ''The Times'' (London), Saturday, May 9, 1992 but were outnumbered when it was put to a vote.John Rawlings (1999) [ Presidential Lectures: Jacques Derrida: Introduction] at Stanford University Derrida suggested in an interview that part of the reason for the violent attacks on his work, was that it questioned and modified &quot;the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene.&quot;Derrida (1990) ''Once Again from the Top'', p.332  Derrida was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Although his membership in Class IV, Section 1 (Philosophy and Religious Studies) was rejected; he was subsequently elected to Class IV, Section 3 (Literary Criticism, including Philology.) He received the 2001 Adorno-Preis from the University of Frankfurt.  In 2002, Derrida appeared in a documentary about himself and his work, entitled ''Derrida''.  In 2003, Derrida was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which reduced his speaking and travelling engagements. He died in a hospital in Paris on the evening of October 8, 2004.[ Deconstruction icon Derrida dies], accessed August 2, 2007.  ==Work== ===Introduction=== On multiple occasions, Derrida referred to himself as an historian:Derrida (1989) ''This Strange Institution Called Literature'', p. 54    Derrida's work centered on challenging unquestioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition and also more broadly to Western culture as a whole. By questioning the fundamental norms and premises of the dominant discourses, and trying to modify them, he attempted to democratize the university scene and to politicize it.Derrida (1992) ''Cambridge Review'', pp. 404, 408–13. During the American 1980s culture wars, this would attract the anger of politically conservative and right-wing intellectuals who were trying to defend the status quo.Jonathan Culler (2008) ''[ Why deconstruction still matters: A conversation with Jonathan Culler]'', interviewed by Paul Sawyer for ''The Cornell Chronicle'', Jan. 24, 2008Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', p. 147  Derrida called his challenge to the assumptions of Western culture &quot;deconstruction&quot;. On some occasions, Derrida referred to deconstruction as a radicalization of a certain spirit of Marxism.Derrida (1976) ''Where a Teaching Body Begins'', English translation 2002, p. 72.  ===Early works=== At the very beginning of his philosophical career Derrida was concerned to elaborate a critique of the limits of phenomenology. His first lengthy academic manuscript, written as a dissertation for his ''diplôme d'études supérieures'' and submitted in 1954, concerned the work of Edmund Husserl.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). 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'' (1972), Derrida said: &quot;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''.&quot;Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, p.5  Derrida first received major attention outside France with his lecture, &quot;Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,&quot; 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; this has led US academics to label his thought as a form of post-structuralism.Bensmaïa, Réda ''Poststructuralism'', in Kritzman (2005), pp.92-93Poster (1988), pp.5-6 Near the beginning of the essay, Derrida argued:    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 enjoyed a mixed relationship.  ===The 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 approach, 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 &quot;Phenomenology vs Structuralism debate.&quot;  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. For the structuralists, this was a false problem, and the &quot;depth&quot; of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential.  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?Jacques Derrida, &quot;'Genesis' and 'Structure' and Phenomenology,&quot; in ''Writing and Difference'' (London: Routledge, 1978), paper originally delivered in 1959 at Cerisy-la-Salle, and originally published in Gandillac, Goldmann &amp; Piaget (eds.), ''Genèse et structure'' (The Hague: Morton, 1964), p. 167:   In other words, every structural or &quot;synchronic&quot; phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.If in 1959 Derrida was addressing this question of genesis and structure to Husserl, that is, to phenomenology, then in &quot;Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences&quot; (also in ''Writing and Difference'', and see below), he addresses these same questions to Lévi-Strauss and the structuralists. This is clear from the very first line of the paper (p. 278):    Between these two papers is staked Derrida's philosophical ground, if not indeed his step beyond or outside philosophy. 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 &quot;diachronic&quot; process can emerge. This originary 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.Derrida (1971), Scarpetta interview, quote from pp.77-8:    On the phrase &quot;default of origin&quot; as applied to Derrida's work, cf., Bernard Stiegler, &quot;Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith,&quot; in Tom Cohen (ed.) ''Jacques Derrida and the Humanities'' (Cambridge &amp; 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 &quot;the originary default of origin that arche-writing constitutes&quot; (p. 239). See also Stiegler, ''Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). It is this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including &quot;deconstruction&quot;.It is opposed to the concept of original purity, which destabilises the thought of both &quot;genesis&quot; and &quot;structure&quot;, cf., Rodolphe Gasché, ''The Tain of the Mirror'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts, &amp; London: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 146:    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).  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 aporias 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.Cf., Rodolphe Gasché, &quot;Infrastructures and Systematicity,&quot; in John Sallis (ed.), ''Deconstruction and Philosophy'' (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 3–4:    ===1967–1972=== Derrida's interests traversed 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'' and ''Writing and Difference''.Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, pp.4-5 quote: &quot;[''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.&quot;  In several occasions Derrida has acknowledged his debt to Husserl and Heidegger, and stated that without them he would have not said a single word.Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, p.8On the influence of Heidegger, Derrida claims in his &quot;Letter to a Japanese Friend&quot; (''Derrida and différance'', eds. Robert Bernasconi and David Wood) that the word &quot;déconstruction&quot; 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 &quot;demolition,&quot; as Derrida shared Heidegger's interest in renovating philosophy. Among the questions asked in these essays are &quot;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?&quot;Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, p.4 In another essay in ''Writing and Difference'' entitled &quot;Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas&quot;, the roots of another major theme in Derrida's thought emerges: the Other as opposed to the SameDerrida, J. Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,''Writing and Difference''. Chicago: University of Chicago. 97-192. “Deconstructive analysis deprives the present of its prestige and exposes it to something ''tout autre'', &quot;wholly other,&quot; beyond what is foreseeable from the present, beyond the horizon of the &quot;same&quot;.&quot;Caputo (1997), p.42 Other than Rousseau, Husserl, Heidegger and Lévinas, these three books discussed, and/or relied upon, the works of many philosophers and authors, including linguist Saussure,''Linguistics and Grammatology'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp.27-73 Hegel,''From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve'' in ''Writing and Difference'' Foucault,''Cogito and the History of Madness'' in ''Writing and Difference'' Bataille, Descartes, anthropologist Lévi-Strauss,''The Violence of the Letter: From Lévi-Strauss to Rousseau'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp.101-140''Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences'' in ''Writing and Difference'' paleontologist Leroi-Gourhan, psychoanalyst Freud,''Freud and the Scene of Writing'' in ''Writing and Difference'' and writers such as Jabès and Artaud.''La Parole soufflée'' and ''The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation'' in ''Writing and Difference''  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 &quot;a search for a transcendental being that serves as the origin or guarantor of meaning&quot;. The attempt to &quot;ground the meaning relations constitutive of the world in an instance that itself lies outside all relationality&quot; was referred to by Heidegger as logocentrism, and Derrida argues that the philosophical enterprise is ''essentially'' logocentric,Lamont '87, pp. 590, 602-606 (Lamont, Michele ''[ How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida]''. [ American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 93, No. 3 [Nov., 1987]) and that this is a paradigm inherited from Judaism and Hellenism. He in turn describes logocentrism as phallocratic, patriarchal and masculinist.Hélène Cixous, Catherine Clément [1975] ''La jeune née'' Derrida contributed to &quot;the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in Western culture&quot;,[ Wayne A. Borody] (1998) pp. 3, 5 ''[ Figuring the Phallogocentric Argument with Respect to the Classical Greek Philosophical Tradition]'' [ Nebula: A Netzine of the Arts and Science], Vol. 13  (pp. 1-27). arguing that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as sacred/profane, signifier/signified, mind/body), and that any text contains implicit hierarchies, &quot;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.&quot; Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as deconstruction of Western culture.  In 1968 he published in the French journal ''Tel Quel'', his influential essay ''Plato's Pharmacy''.Spurgin, Tim (1997) [ Reader's Guide to Derrida's &quot;Plato's Pharmacy&quot;]Graff (1993) ''Plato's Pharmacy'', along with other lectures and essays produced by Derrida from 1968 till 1972, were collected in two books ''Dissemination'' and ''Margins of Philosophy''. Also in 1972 a collection of interviews, entitled ''Positions'', was published.  ===There is nothing outside the text=== There is one statement by Derrida which he regarded as the axial statement of his whole essay on Rousseau (part of the highly influential ''Of Grammatology'', 1967), and which is perhaps his most quoted and famous statement ever. It's the assertion that &quot;there is nothing outside the text&quot; (''il n'ya pas de hors-texte''),Derrida (1967) ''Of Grammatology'', Part II ''Intriduction to the &quot;Age of Rousseau,&quot; section 2 &quot;...''That Dangerous Supplement''...&quot;, title ''The Exorbitant. Question of Method'', pp. 158–59, 163 which means that “there is no such a thing as out-of-the-text”, in other words, the context is an integral part of the text.Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', p. 136  Critics of Derrida  have countless times quoted it as a slogan to characterize and stigmatize deconstruction.Pidgen, Charles R. (1990) ''On a defence of derrida'', in [ ''The Critical review''] (1990) Issues 30-32, pp. 40–41Sullivan, Patricia (2004) [ ''Jacques Derrida Dies; Deconstructionist Philosopher''], in ''Washington Post'', October 10, 2004, p. C11, accessed August 2, 2007. Some commentators have said that it means that is not possible to think outside of the philosophical system,Reilly, Brian J. (2005) ''Jacques Derrida'', in Kritzman (2005), p. 500. or that there is no experience of reality outside of language.Coward, Harold G. (1990) [ ''Derrida and Indian philosophy''], pp. 83, 137   Regarding to the broadness of the concept of &quot;text&quot;, he added:Royle, Nicholas (2004) [ ''Jacques Derrida''], pp. 62–63Derrida and Ferraris (1997) p.76    ===Deconstruction===  While discussing the reception his famous assertion that &quot;There is nothing outside the text,&quot; Derrida gave the following description of deconstruction:   ===1973–1980=== Starting in 1972, Derrida produced on average more than a book per year. Derrida continued to produce important works, such as ''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 culture wars, conservatives started a dispute over Derrida's influence and legacy upon American intellectuals, and claimed that he influenced American literary critics and theorists more than academic philosophers.Sven Ove Hansson ''[ Philosophical Schools]'' - Editorial From Theoria'' vol. 72, Part 1 (2006).  ===Quarrel with John Searle===  A sequence of encounters with analytical philosophy is collected in ''Limited Inc'' (1988). In 1972, Derrida wrote &quot;Signature Event Context,&quot; an essay on J. L. Austin's speech act theory; following a critique of this text by John Searle in his 1977 essay ''Reiterating the Differences'', Derrida wrote the same year ''Limited Inc abc ...'', a long defense of his earlier argument. In the course of the exchanges, Derrida said that Searle seemed to have read very few of his works.Derrida, Jacques. Limited, Inc. Northwestern University Press, 1988. p. 29: &quot;...I have read some of his [Searle's] work (more, in any case, than he seems to have read of mine)&quot;[  In 1983, Searle told to ''The New York Review of Books'' a remark on Derrida allegedly made by Michel Foucault in a private conversation with Searle himself; Derrida later despised Searle's gesture as gossip, and also condemned as violent the use of a mass circulation magazine to fight an academic debate.Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', in ''Limited Inc.'' page 158, footnote 12 According to Searle's account, Foucault called Derrida's prose style &quot;terrorist obscurantism&quot;; Searle's quote was:    In his response, Derrida also noted that Searle's claimed quote was in grammatically incorrect French.Searle (1983) and (2000) Searle exemplified his view on deconstruction in the ''New York Review of Books'', February 2, 1984;Louis Mackey and Searle (1984) for example:    In 1988, Derrida wrote ''Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion'', to be published with the previous essays in the collection ''Limited Inc''.  ===Analytic philosophers: &quot;this is not philosophy&quot;=== Some analytic philosophers have claimed, since at least the 1980s, that Derrida's work is &quot;not philosophy.&quot; 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. Jonathan Culler has argued that these attacks stem from right-wing academics.  Later in 1992 the claim was restated and publicized to the mass media with an open letter that analytic philosophers sent to ''The Times'', in the attempt to put media pressure on Cambridge University which was going to grant Derrida an honorary philosophy degree. When the mass media sensation was over, Derrida addressed the claim during an interview, responding that philosophy's best tradition has never confined itself to its own field:    ===''Of Spirit''=== On March 14, 1987, Derrida presented at the CIPH conference titled &quot;Heidegger: Open Questions&quot; 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, &quot;spirit&quot; was one of the philosophical terms that Heidegger set his sights on dismantling. With his Nazi political engagement in 1933, however, Heidegger came out as a champion of the &quot;German Spirit,&quot; and only withdrew from an exalting interpretation of the term in 1952. Derrida's book reconnects in a number of respects with his long engagement of Heidegger (such as &quot;The Ends of Man&quot; in ''Margins of Philosophy'' and the essays marked under the heading ''Geschlecht''). Derrida reconsiders three other fundamental and recurring elements of Heideggerian philosophy: the distinction between human and animal, technology, and the privilege of questioning as the essence of philosophy.  ''Of Spirit'' is an important contribution to the long 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 Nazi ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) faction. Derrida responded to Farías in an interview, &quot;Heidegger, the Philosopher's Hell&quot; and a subsequent article, &quot;Comment donner raison? How to Concede, with Reasons?&quot; 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.  ''Of Spirit'' was also one of Derrida's first publications on the relationship between philosophy and nationalism, on which he had been teaching in the mid-1980s.  ===1990s: political and ethical themes=== Some have argued that Derrida's work took a &quot;political turn&quot; 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). Others, however, including Derrida himself, have argued that much of the philosophical work done in his &quot;political turn&quot; can be dated to earlier essays.  Those who argue Derrida engaged in an &quot;ethical turn&quot; refer to works such as ''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 Sacrifice of Isaac,Jack Reynolds, Jonathan Roffe (2004) ''[ Understanding Derrida]'' p.49''Gift of Death'', pp. 57-72  and from Søren Kierkegaard's ''Fear and Trembling''. Derrida's contemporary readings of Emmanuel Lévinas, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Jan Patočka, on themes such as law, justice, responsibility, and friendship, had a significant impact on fields beyond philosophy. Derrida delivered a eulogy at Lévinas' funeral, later published as ''Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas'', an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy.  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 (cultural identity, European identity, national identity, ..), in the name of which in Europe have being unleashed &quot;the worst violences,&quot; &quot;the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, religious or nationalist fanaticism.&quot;''The Other Heading'', pp.5-6  ===The dispute with Richard Wolin and the NYRB=== Perhaps most persistent among the accusers of nihilism is Richard Wolin, who in 1991 has argued 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 &quot;deconstructive gesture of overturning and reinscription ends up by threatening to efface many of the essential differences between Nazism and non-Nazism&quot;.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 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 &quot;demonstrably execrable&quot; and &quot;weak, simplistic, and compulsively aggressive&quot;. 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 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.[ [ Derrida in turn responded, in somewhat acerbic fashion, to Sheehan and Wolin, in &quot;The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company do Business),&quot; which was published in the book ''Points...''.Derrida, &quot;The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company do Business),&quot; published in the book ''Points...'' (1995; see the footnote about ISBN 0-226-14314-7, here) (see also the [1992] French Version ''Points de suspension: entretiens'' (ISBN 0-8047-2488-1) there).  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.Points, p.434  ===Cambridge Honorary Doctorate=== Derrida has often been the target of attacks by analytic philosophers; an attack of major significance was their 1992 attempt at stopping Cambridge University from granting Derrida an Honorary Doctorate.  For its historical impact through the centuries, Cambridge was widely recognized as the most influential European University, one that &quot;continues to play a very particular role for the university consciousness in the world,&quot; Its decision to confer an honorary degree to Derrida was seen as a challenge to the apparent hegemony of the Anglo-American Analytic philosophy over most of the philosophy departments of the world.Derrida ''et al.'' (1994) Roundtable discussios  There were protesters from within Cambridge philosophy faculty, but mostly the letter signatoires were from other institutions from the US and UK, a circumstance that some condemned as an attack to the academic freedom of Cambridge scholars. Eighteen protesters from other institutions, including Willard Van Orman Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and René Thom, sent a letter to Cambridge claiming that Derrida's work &quot;does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor&quot; and describing Derrida's philosophy as being composed of &quot;tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists.&quot;  The letter concluded that:    In the end the protesters were outnumbered when Cambridge put the motion on a vote. Derrida suggested in an interview that part of the reason for the violent attacks on his work, was that it questioned and modified &quot;the rules of the dominant discourse, it tries to politicize and democratize education and the university scene.&quot;  Interviewed in 1995, Derrida talked about the difficulties of divulgatives tasks under limited space and time, when professors and journalists need to explain something difficult without betrying it; Derrida argument is also a rebuttal of certain charges of obfuscation and obscurantism:Derrida (2005) ''Points... interviews'', p.429   ===The Work of Mourning (1981–2001)=== Beginning with &quot;The Deaths of Roland Barthes&quot; 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 &quot;Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War&quot;.  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, ''The end of the world, unique each time'') to include essays dedicated to Gérard Granel and Maurice Blanchot.  ===2002=== In the October of 2002, at the theatrical opening of the 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, Derrida (2002) Q&amp;A session at Film Forum Among the places in which Derrida mentions the ''Spectacle'', a 1997 interview about the notion of the intellectual..  ==Criticism==  A broad overview of the history of Derrida's reception, covering the period until the publication of ''Specters of Marx'' (1994), is given in ''The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation'' (2006).  ===African bias=== Christopher Wise in his book ''Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East'' (2009) places Derrida's work in the historical context of his North African origins, an argument first briefly made by Robert J.C. Young in ''White Mythologies: Writing History and the West'' (1990) and extended in his ''Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction'' (2001) where Young surveys the writings of numerous theorists and situates the whole framework of Derrida's thinking in relation to the impact of growing up in the colonial conditions of French Algeria.  In contrast, Wise compares Derrida's thought to precolonial notions of the word that are rooted in ancient Egyptian and African society.  Wise argues that Derridean concept of spirit/specter as occult pharmakon is indebted not only to the Hebraic notion of ''ruah'' but also the Egyptian ''heka'', Soninke ''naxamala'', Mande ''nyama'', and many other comparable Egypto-African concepts of the word, some that are historically prior to the Hebraic ''ruah''.  Wise suggests that Derrida deliberately elides related African concepts of the word in order to accord Judaism a place of special prominence within the history of European philosophy.  He argues instead that European philosophy must acknowledge its historical indebtedness to Middle Eastern and African thought, which is not limited to the influence of Judaism alone.  ===Lack of analytic philosophy's clarity=== Though Derrida addressed the American Philosophical Association at least on one occasion in 1988,. and was highly regarded by some contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty, Alexander Nehamas,&quot;Truth and Consequences: How to Understand Jacques Derrida,&quot; The New Republic 197:14 (October 5, 1987). and Stanley Cavell, his work has been regarded by other analytic philosophers, such as John Searle and Willard Van Orman Quine, as pseudophilosophy or sophistry.  His work is criticized for his alleged misuse of scientific terms and concepts in ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science'' (1998).  Two quarrels in particular went out of academic circles and received international mass media coverage.  The 1972–88 quarrel with John Searle, and the analytic philosophers' pressures on Cambridge University to not award Derrida an honorary degree.  ===Intentional obfuscation=== 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'') 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.Rorty, Richard. ''Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-521-36781-6. Ch. 6: &quot;From ironist theory to private allusions: Derrida&quot;  According to journalist Jonathan Kandell, an example of Derrida's putatively obfuscationist style was a  of his philosophy in a 1993 paper he presented at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, in New York, which began: .  ===Recycled Borges=== Emir Rodríguez Monegal alleged that many of Derrida's ideas were recycled from the work of Borges (from essays and tales such as &quot;La fruición literaria&quot; (1928), &quot;Elementos de preceptiva&quot; (1933), &quot;Pierre Menard&quot; (1939), &quot;Tlön&quot; (1940), &quot;Kafka y sus precursores&quot; (1951)  ), opening his article with :   me impresionaba por su rigor técnico y la infinita seducción de su espejo textual pero me era familiar: la había practicado en Borges ''avant la lettre''. }}    ===Hostile obituaries=== Critical obituaries of Derrida were published in ''The New York Times,''Kandell, Jonathan. ''[ Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74]&quot;, October 10, 2004''The Economist''The Economist. [ Obituary: Jacques Derrida, French intellectual], Oct 21st 2004 and ''The Independent''.[ The Independent] The magazine ''The Nation'' responded to the NYT obituary saying that &quot;even though American papers had scorned and trivialized Derrida before, the tone seemed particularly caustic for an obituary of an internationally acclaimed philosopher who had profoundly influenced two generations of American humanities scholars.&quot;Ross Benjamin ''[ Hostile Obituary for Derrida]'', The Nation, November 24, 2004  ===Charges of nihilism=== Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, in 1976 briefly labeled Derrida's 1967 criticism in ''Cogito and the History of Madness'', as &quot;facile, nihilistic objections,&quot; without giving further argumentation. In 1991, the dispute with Richard Wolin, which was also conducted and publicized through the mass circulation magazine ''New York Review of Books,'' also included charges of nihilism.  Derrida often said that &quot;his interests lie in provoking not an anti-Enlightenment but a new Enlightenment&quot;.Caputo (1997), p. 54.  To provoke this new Enlightenment, he had to question the axioms and certainties of the Enlightenment itself.  However, his critics respond by claiming that Derrida's obfuscating style and nihilistic tendencies cannot adequately provide any ground for a 'New Enlightenment’.  ==Politics==  Derrida engaged with many political issues, movements, and debates: * Although Derrida participied to the rallies of the May 1968 protests, and organized the first general assembly at the ''École Normale Superieure'', he said  speech, of restored  and so forth.}}Derrida (1991) ''&quot;A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking&quot;'', pp. 347–9. During May '68, he met frequently with Maurice Blanchot.Bennington (1991) p. 332 * He registered his objections to the Vietnam War in delivering &quot;The Ends of Man&quot; in the United States. * In 1981 Derrida, on the prompting of Roger Scruton and others, founded the French Jan Hus association with structuralist historian Jean-Pierre Vernant. Its purpose was to aid dissident or persecuted Czech intellectuals. Derrida became vice-president.Powell (2006) p. 151 * In late 1981 he was arrested by the Czechoslovakian government upon leading a conference in Prague that lacked government authorization, and charged with the , which he claimed were planted as he visited Kafka's grave.  He was released (or , as the Czechoslovakian government put it) after the interventions of the Mitterrand government, and the assistance of Michel Foucault, returning to Paris on January 1, 1982.Jacques Derrida, &quot;'To Do Justice to Freud': The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis,&quot; ''Resistances of Psychoanalysis'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) pp. 70–1. * He registered his concerns against the proliferation of nuclear war in 1984.Derrida, Jacques. &quot;No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)&quot;. Diacritics, 1984 * He was active in cultural activities against the  Apartheid government of South Africa and on behalf of Nelson Mandela beginning in 1983. * He met with Palestinian intellectuals during a 1988 visit to Jerusalem. He was active in the collective &quot;89 for equality&quot;, which campaigned for the right of foreigners to vote in local elections. * He protested against the death penalty, dedicating his seminar in his last years to the production of a non-utilitarian argument for its abolition, and was active in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. * Derrida was not known to have participated in any conventional electoral political party until 1995, when he joined a committee in support of Lionel Jospin’s Socialist candidacy, although he expressed misgivings about such organizations going back to Communist organizational efforts while he was a student at ENS. * In the 2002 French presidential election he refused to vote in the run-off between far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac, citing a lack of acceptable choices. * While supportive of the American government in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq (see ''Rogues'' and his contribution to ''Philosophy in a Time of Terror'' with Giovanna Borradori and Jürgen Habermas).  Beyond these explicit political interventions, however, Derrida was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself, within and beyond philosophy. Derrida insisted that a distinct political undertone had pervaded his texts from the very beginning of his career. Nevertheless, the attempt to understand the political implications of notions of responsibility, reason of state, the other, decision, sovereignty, Europe, friendship, difference, faith, and so on, became much more marked from the early 1990s on. By 2000, theorizing &quot;democracy to come,&quot; and thinking the limitations of existing democracies, had become important concerns.  ==Influences on Derrida== Although Derrida has sometimes been characterized has belonging to a certain Continental philosophy tradition, as opposed to its ancestral antagonist the Analytic philosophy tradition, during the Derrida-Searle dispute he wrote:Derrida (1988) ''Afterword'', pp.130-1 I sometimes felt, paradoxically, closer to Austin [prominent analytic philosopher] than to a certain Continental tradition from which Searle, on the contrary, has inherited numerous gestures and a logic I try to deconstruct. I now have to add this: it is often because &quot;Searle&quot; ignores this tradition or pretends to take no account of it that he rests blindly imprisoned in it, repeating its most problematic gestures, falling short of the most elementary critical questions , not to mention the deconstructive ones. It is because in appearance at least &quot;I&quot; am more of a historian that &quot;I&quot; am a less passive, more attentive and more &quot;deconstructive&quot; heir of that so-called tradition. And hence, perhaps again paradoxically, more foreign to that tradition. I put quotation marks around &quot;Searle&quot; and &quot;I&quot; to mark that beyond these indexes, I am aiming at tendencies, types, styles, or situations rather than at persons.  Crucial readings in his adolescence were Rousseau's ''Reveries of a Solitary Walker'' and ''Confessions'', André Gide's journal, ''La porte étroite'', ''Les nourritures terrestres'' and ''The Immoralist''; and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche.Derrida (1989) ''This Strange Institution Called Literature'', pp.35, 38-9 The phrase ''Families, I hate you!'' in particular, which inspired Derrida's adolescence, is a famous verse from Gide's ''Les nourritures terrestres'', book IV.Gide's ''Les nourritures terrestres'', book IV, quote: «Familles, je vous hais! Foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur.» In a 1991 interview Derrida commented on a similar verse, also from book IV of the same Gide work: &quot;I hated  the homes, the families, all the places where man thinks to find rest&quot; (''Je haïssais les foyers, les familles, tous lieux où l'homme pense trouver un repos''), saying 1991 Interview with Francois Ewald ''Wahn muß übers Denken wachen'' published in: Werner Kolk (Translator). Literataz. 1992, p. 1-2. (German), as quoted in   Other influences upon Derrida are Martin Heidegger, 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, and Stéphane Mallarmé.  ==Derrida and his peers and contemporaries== Derrida's philosophical friends, allies, and students included Paul de Man, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, 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, Samuel Weber, and Simon Critchley.  ===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 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===   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 authored a book ''Memoires: pour Paul de Man'' and in 1988 wrote an article in the journal ''Critical Inquiry'' called &quot;Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War&quot;. 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 German occupation of Belgium, including several that were explicitly antisemitic.  Derrida complicated the notion that it is possible to simply read de Man's later scholarship through the prism of these earlier political essays. Rather, any claims about de Man's work should be understood in relation to the entire body of his scholarship. 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 a phrase of Beaufret's that Derrida (and, after him, Maurice Blanchot) interpreted as antisemitic.  ===Michel Foucault=== Derrida's criticism of Foucault in the essay ''Cogito and the History of Madness'' (from ''Writing and Difference''). It was first given as a lecture on March 4, 1963, at a conference at Wahl's ''Collège philosophique'', which Foucault attended, and caused a rift between the two men that was never fully mended.Powell (2006) pp.34-5  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 &quot;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.&quot;Foucault, Michel, ''History of Madness'', ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London: Routledge, 2006), p. xxiv,573. 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.Carlo Ginzburg [1976] ''Il formaggio e i vermi'', translated in 1980 as ''[ 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 Carlo Ginzburg briefly labeled Derrida's criticism in ''Cogito and the History of Madness'', as &quot;facile, nihilistic objections,&quot; without giving further argumentation.  ===Derrida's translators===  Geoffrey Bennington, Avital Ronell and Samuel Weber belong to a group of Derrida translators. Many of these are esteemed thinkers in their own right, with whom Derrida 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. 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 are currently engaged in translating Derrida's previously unpublished seminars, which span from 1959 to 2003.  ''The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I'', which presents Derrida's seminar from 2001 to 2002, has appeared in English translation; further volumes currently projected for the series include ''The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II'' (2002–2003), ''Death Penalty, Volume I'' (1999–2000), ''Death Penalty, Volume II'' (2000–2001), ''Perjury and Pardon, Volume I'' (1997–1998), and ''Perjury and Pardon, Volume II'' (1998–1999).  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 &quot;Derridabase&quot;) 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 &quot;Circumfession&quot;). Derrida seems to have viewed Bennington in particular as a kind of rabbinical explicator, noting at the end of the &quot;Applied Derrida&quot; conference, held at the University of Luton in 1995 that: &quot;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.&quot;  ===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 &quot;medium,&quot;''Speech and Phenomena'', Introduction of phonetic writing as &quot;the medium of the great metaphysical, scientific, techni­cal, and economic adventure of the West.&quot;''Of Grammatology'', Part I.1   He expressed his disagreement with McLuhan in regard to what Derrida called McLuhan's ideology about the end of writing.Poster (2010), pp.3-4, 12-13 In a 1982 interview, he said: &quot;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.&quot;Derrida [1982] [ ''Excuse me, but I never said exactly so: Yet Another Derridean Interview''], with Paul Brennan, ''On the Beach'' (Glebe NSW, Australia). No.1/1983: p. 42  And in his 1972 essay ''Signature Event Context'' he said: &quot;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''.&quot;Derrida 1972 ''Signature Event Context''  ==Works by Derrida==   '''Selected translations of works by Derrida''' * ''“Speech and Phenomena” and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs'', trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). * ''Of Grammatology'', trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore &amp; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) (hardcover: ISBN 0-8018-1841-9, paperback: ISBN 0-8018-1879-6, corrected edition: ISBN 0-8018-5830-5).[ * ''Writing and Difference'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) ISBN 978-0-226-14329-3. * ''Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles'', trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1979, ISBN 978-0-226-14333-0). * ''The Archeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac'', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln &amp; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980). * ''Dissemination'', trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, ISBN 978-0-226-14334-7). * ''Positions'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, ISBN 978-0-226-14331-6) [Paris, Minuit, 1972]. * ''Margins of Philosophy'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982, ISBN 978-0-226-14326-2). * ''Signsponge'', trans. Richard Rand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). * ''The Ear of the Other'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (Lincoln &amp; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). * ''Glas'', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. &amp; Richard Rand (Lincoln &amp; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986). * ''Memoires for Paul de Man'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; revised edn., 1989). * ''The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond'', trans. Alan Bass (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-226-14322-4). * ''The Truth in Painting'', trans. Geoffrey Bennington &amp; Ian McLeod (Chicago &amp; London: Chicago University Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-226-14324-8). * ''Limited Inc'' (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988). * ''Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction'', trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln &amp; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). * ''Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question'', trans. Geoffrey Bennington &amp; Rachel Bowlby (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-226-14319-4). * ''Cinders'', trans. Ned Lukacher (Lincoln &amp; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). * ''Acts of Literature'' (New York &amp; London: Routledge, 1992). * ''Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-226-14314-9). * ''The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe'', trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael B. Naas (Bloomington &amp; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992). * ''Aporias'', trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993). * ''Jacques Derrida'', co-author &amp; trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago &amp; London: Chicago University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-226-04262-6). * ''Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins'', trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael Naas (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-226-14308-8). * ''Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York &amp; London: Routledge, 1994). * ''Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression'', trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-226-14367-5). * ''The Gift of Death'', trans. David Wills (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-226-14306-4 ). * ''On the Name'', trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., &amp; Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). * ''Points...: Interviews 1974-1994'', trans. Peggy Kamuf and others, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) (see also the footnote about ISBN 0-226-14314-7, here) (see also the [1992] French Version ''Points de suspension: entretiens'' (ISBN 0-8047-2488-1) there). * ''Chora L Works'', with Peter Eisenman (New York: Monacelli, 1997). * ''Politics of Friendship'', trans. George Collins (London &amp; New York: Verso, 1997). * ''Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin'', trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). * ''Resistances of Psychoanalysis'', trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). * ''The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud'', with Paule Thévenin, trans. Mary Ann Caws (Cambridge, Mass., &amp; London: MIT Press, 1998). * ''Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas'', trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). * ''Rights of Inspection'', trans. David Wills (New York: Monacelli, 1999). * ''Demeure: Fiction and Testimony'', with Maurice Blanchot, ''The Instant of My Death'', trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). * ''Of Hospitality'', trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). * ''Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars'' (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001). * ''On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness'', trans. Mark Dooley &amp; Michael Hughes (London &amp; New York: Routledge, 2001). * ''A Taste for the Secret'', with Maurizio Ferraris, trans. Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity, 2001). * ''The Work of Mourning'', trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael Naas (Chicago &amp; London: Chicago University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-226-14281-4). * ''Acts of Religion'' (New York &amp; London: Routledge, 2002). * ''Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews'', with Bernard Stiegler, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). * ''Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy'', trans Peter Pericles Trifonas (Lanham: Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2002). * ''Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971–2001'', trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). * ''Who's Afraid of Philosophy?: Right to Philosophy 1'', trans. Jan Plug (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). * ''Without Alibi'', trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). * ''Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida'', with Jürgen Habermas (Chicago &amp; London: University of Chicago Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-226-06666-0). * ''The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy'', trans. Marian Hobson (Chicago &amp; London: Chicago University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-226-14315-6). * ''Counterpath'', with Catherine Malabou, trans. David Wills (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). * ''Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2'', trans. Jan Plug (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). * ''For What Tomorrow...: A Dialogue'', with Elisabeth Roudinesco, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). * ''Rogues: Two Essays on Reason'', trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). * ''On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy'', trans. Christine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). * ''Paper Machine'', trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). * ''Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan'', trans. Thomas Dutoit (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). * ''H. C. for Life: That Is to Say...'', trans. Laurent Milesi &amp; Stefan Herbrechter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). * ''Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, And Genius: The Secrets of the Archive'', trans. Beverly Bie Brahic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). * ''Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview'', with Jean Birnbaum, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault &amp; Michael Naas (Melville House, 2007). * ''Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume I'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). * ''Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume II'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). * ''The Animal That Therefore I Am'', trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). * ''The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I'', trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-14428-3). * ''Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography'', ed. and trans. Gerhard Richter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). * ''Athens, Still Remains: The Photographs of Jean-François Bonhomme'', trans. Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010). * ''Parages'', ed. John P. Leavey, trans. Tom Conley, James Hulbert, John P. Leavey, and Avital Ronell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). * ''The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II'', trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming November 2011).  