The French philosopher Jacques Derrida (born 1930), by developing a strategy of reading called "deconstruction," challenged assumptions about metaphysics and the character of language and written text...
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Few intellectuals have marked the domain of critical theory as Jacques Derrida has done; few, indeed, have generated such appreciation and such criticism. "Deconstruction," Derrida's reinscription of ...
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Critical Essay by Marjorie Grene
However diverse have been the styles of philosophizing of the past half century, their practitioners have agreed on one thing: we need a new beginning. Even if, like ...
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Critical Essay by David Hoy
Of the essays collected and excellently translated in Dissemination, the best example of Derrida's own practice of the deconstructive criticism he fathered is �...
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Critical Essay by Michael Wood
Derrida's name for his method of reading, when it tackles the long conspiracy which Derrida sees in Western thought, is deconstruction. He doesn't deconst...
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Critical Essay by Edward W. Said
Derrida's entire procedure is to show, either in the pretended rapport between critical and original texts or in the representation of a problem by a text, tha...
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Critical Essay by Richard Rorty
To understand Derrida, one must see his work as the latest development in [the] non-Kantian, dialectical tradition—the latest attempt of the dialecticians to sh...
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Critical Essay by Joseph N. Riddel
Foucault and Derrida have been disseminated and transcribed in this country for several years now, most often as the common discourse of an analytic addressed again...
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Critical Essay by Maria Ruegg
No one has demonstrated more effectively than Derrida the degree to which the "symbolic systems" of structuralism are dependent on traditional metaphysical...
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Critical Essay by Donald G. Marshall
After inconclusive battles over structuralism, academic critics are now fighting about "deconstruction."… A Nietzschean edition of ancient sk...
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Critical Essay by Denis Donoghue
Derrida has described his work as "a general strategy of deconstruction which would avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysics and si...
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Critical Essay by Geoffrey H. Hartman
The house that Jack has built, while not a pack of cards, will infuriate those who think books should be solidly constructed, unified, and with an intellectual s...
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Donoghue is an Irish critic and educator. In the following review, he asserts that Of Grammatology, in spite of its "excruciating" difficulties, is a work of great importance for student...
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In the following essay, Scott links Derrida's notion of différance with Freud's theories of the unconscious, and speculates on the possible therapeutic uses of deconstruction.
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Norris is an English critic and educator who has authored numerous studies on Derrida and deconstruction. In the following excerpt, he offers a detailed summary of Derrida's theories on languag...
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An American philosopher, critic, and educator, Rorty is the most prominent contemporary advocate for the discipline known as pragmatism. In the following review of Margins of Philosophy, he examines t...
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An Excerpt from Writing and Difference
It would be easy enough to show that the concept of structure and even the word "structure" itself are as old as the epistēmēȁ...
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Nehamas is a Greek-born American educator and critic whose philosophical study, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1986), was widely praised as one of the most important book-length interpretations of Nie...
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In the following essay, Rorty disputes the interpretations of Derrida's work put forth by such critics as Christopher Norris and Rodolphe Gasché, who argue that Derrida is a rigorous log...
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In the following review of Glas, Aune remarks that its barriers to comprehension are even greater than in Derrida's earlier books, yet he praises it for its erudition and scholarly rigor.
My...
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In the following review of Glas, The Truth in Painting, and The Post Card, Winquist summarizes Derrida's philosophy and considers its relation to theology.
Deconstruction is always deeply c...
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In the following review of The Post Card, The Truth in Painting, and Glas, Caputo discusses Derrida's use of psychoanalytic and theological ideas in his critique of traditional philosophy.
O...
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You must be feeling pretty good about yourselves these days, ever since those Norwegian epidemiologists conferred the equivalent of intellectual primogeniture on all of you.
And truth be told, we&#...
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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Critical Essay by Marjorie Grene
Dear Firstborn Sisters and Brothers,
