Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derridawas a French philosopher, born in Algeria. Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy...
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth15 July 1930
reading kind young
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.
photography photograph
I absolutely forbade all public photographs of myself. I like photography, I don't have anything against it, but...
believe writing thinking
I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.
territory certain institutions
Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.
winning looks surprise
Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.
school paris sick
The boarding-school experience in Paris was very hard, I didn't put up with it very well. I was sick all the time, or in any case frail, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
philosophy responsibility numbers
In philosophy, you have to reckon with the implicit level of an accumulated reserve, and thus with a very great number of relays, with the shared responsibility of these relays.
writing feelings stronger
Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.
memories mixtures fidelity
That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.
dream philosophy writing
In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.
believe names echoes
My most resolute opponents believe that I am too visible, that I am a little too alive, that my name echoes too much in the texts which they nevertheless claim to be inaccessible.
circumcision
Circumcision , that's all I've ever talked about.
giving temptation would-be
I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous.
self drawing portraiture
An act of naming should quite rightly enable me to call any-thing a self-portrait, not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not, but everything that happens to me, that I can affect, or that affects me.