Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Algerian-born French philosopher, whose work originated the school of deconstruction, a strategy of analysis that has been applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law, and architecture. In 1967 Derrida published three books—Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, and Writing and Difference—which introduced the deconstructive approach to reading texts. Derrida’s later works continued to define his thought and to reveal the contradictions and ambiguities in the texts of other thinkers. See also Western Philosophy.

Derrida was born in El Biar, Algeria. In 1952 he began studying philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he later taught from 1965 to 1984. From 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught at the Sorbonne in Paris. From the early 1970s on, he divided much of his time between Paris and the United States, where he taught at universities such as Johns Hopkins, Yale, and the University of California at Irvine. His other works include Glas (1974) and The Post Card (1980).

Derrida’s work focused on language. He contended that the traditional, or metaphysical, way of reading makes a number of false assumptions about the nature of texts. A traditional reader believes that language is capable of expressing ideas without changing them, that in the hierarchy of language writing is secondary to speech, and that the author of a text is the source of its meaning. Derrida's deconstructive style of reading subverted these assumptions and challenged the idea that a text has an unchanging, unified meaning.

Drawing on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Derrida questioned this traditional approach to texts and the assumption that speech is a clear and direct method of communication. As a result, he insisted, the author’s intentions in speaking cannot be unconditionally accepted. Derrida’s approach multiplied the number of legitimate interpretations of a text. Derrida did not negate meaning, but he showed that there were many possible meanings that depended on the reader and the reader’s context as much as on the author.

Deconstruction shows the multiple layers of meaning at work in language. By deconstructing the works of previous scholars, Derrida attempted to show that language is constantly shifting. Although Derrida’s thought is sometimes portrayed by critics as destructive of philosophy, deconstruction can be better understood as showing the unavoidable tensions between the ideals of clarity and coherence that govern philosophy and the inevitable shortcomings that accompany its production.