How to Read Derrida

How to Read...

by Penelope Deutscher, Simon Critchley (Series Editor)

Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. An idiosyncratic and highly controversial French philosopher, Jacques Derrida inspired profound changes in disciplines as diverse as law, anthropology, literature and architecture. In Derrida’s view, texts and contexts are woven with inconsistencies and blindspots, which provide us with a chance to think in new ways about, among other things, language, community, identity and forgiveness. Derrida’s suggestions for “how to read” lead to a new vision of ethics and a new concept of responsibility.

Penelope Deutscher discusses extracts from the full range of Derrida’s work, including Of Grammatology, Dissemination, Limited Inc, The Other Heading: Reflections on Europe, Monolinguism of the Other, Given Time , and “Force of Law."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Theory, France, Cultural, Literature

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Penelope Deutscher specializes in twentieth-century and contemporary French philosophy, and in gender and sexuality studies. Current projects are focused on the intersections of biopolitics, reproductive futurism, and the genealogy of gendered rights claims . Her most recent publications are Foucault’s Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason and two co-edited collections, Foucault/Derrida: Fifty Years On (co-edited with Olivia Custer and Samir Haddad) and Critical Theory in Critical Times (co-edited with Cristina Lafont), with Columbia University Press.

She is also the author of Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction and the History of Philosophy (Routledge 1997); A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray (Cornell University Press, 2002), How to Read Derrida (Granta/Norton 2006), and The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2008)...

Reviews

[s.penkevich [mental health hiatus] · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘There is nothing outside the text’

Much like an introductory lecture for a new course, How to Read Derrida serves as an engaging, general overview of the many ideas examined by the great French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) for those who will proceed into the actual works and words of the man. The final bit of that sentence is of utmost importance, as the nature of Derrida’s works makes it crucial to tackle the actual documents head on in order to reach for a more proper understanding. Having been advised against reading a ‘general overview’¹ for reasons that will be lighted upon shortly, this book was a beneficial preliminary study as I awaited the arrive of Derrida’s Writing and Difference in the mail, being a sort of basic lecture, a rough sketched map to assist in finding my bearings in the Derrida’s dense texts when I would finally be able to step through their intimidating gates.² In short, this book is a great way to know how to stay afloat when thrown into the deep end.

The pitfalls of this book are made apparent in Derrida’s own theories. A blunt, unpolished summary of Derrida’s deconstruction would surround his denial of purity and that we can often decode a misplaced assertion of and ideal or purity in many arguments. These ideals are an argument’s undoing, and deconstructions serves as an intervention to expose these illegitimate ideals that a statement is built upon (I apologize that this is a very rough outline of ideas, however, a more in depth discussion will be better placed in a review of Derrida’s actual books, so bear with me. For a better outline, perhaps explore his Wikipedia article). Following this denial of purity would include the impossibility of any total understanding of Derrida’s works, or of any work for that matter. Passing from Derrida through Penelope Deutscher, who, to her credit, does a marvelous job of digesting such difficult topics and regurgitating them in an accessible manner, (and now through me to you) now presents an interpretation of an interpretation of a written interpretation of his ideas, picking up impurities and other personal reflections that taint the original message which was never pure to begin with. In effect, this book is a supplement to Derrida’s own works – supplement, mind you, connoting some sort of plentitude, which would imply there is some sort of deficiency in which this supplement wishes to complement. ‘Supplement’ is itself a term used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Derrida argues is an ‘undecidable’, which, in Deutscher’s words, ‘is a term…that does not fit comfortably into either of the two poles of a binary opposition…supplement is neither plentitude nor deficiency.’ Plainly speaking, although complete understanding of Derrida’s deconstruction is inherently impossible on the theories own grounds, any movement away from the original text takes us further away from understanding. However, it might be apparent that there are contradictions in the preceeding statement, as it would impose a sort of ideal upon Derrida’s original texts. You may be beginning to understand the complications of examining Derrida and the intensely self-conscious attitudes it imposes on anyone attempting to explain it.

Now, as an 'undecidable' is a term between plentitude and deficiency, Derrida also heavily uses différence, an untranslatable term for something between presence and absence. It is a ‘kind of absence that generates the effect of presence. It is neither identity, nor difference. Instead, it is a kind of differentiation that produces the effect of identity and of difference between those identities’ (Deutscher). This idea stems from a critique on Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics in which Saussure concludes that language is constructed of elements called ‘signs’ which appear to be present but are actually not and are only given meaning by their relationship with other signs.

’we discover not ideas given in advance but valuesemanating from the linguistic system…. [T]hese concepts are purely differential, not positively defined by their content but negatively defined by their relations with other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is that they are what the others are not’
-Saussure, 1974

Derrida plays with these differential movements of language, showing how a term is never fixed and constantly ‘deferred’ through other terms (Deutscher gives an example lifted from Saussure of how the definition of a dog can send you endlessly leafing through a dictionary through the SEE ALSO: ‘s and to look up the definition of each word in the original definition, follow through any figurative uses of the word, etc.), making différence the 'infinite passages' between words. In short, identity is therefor an illegitimate ideal since any insistence of identity, any true difference, is actually just through a varying level of différence. In order to better understand a belief, we must then swap the binaries, make low what is asserted as high, and vice versa (a really interesting technique that is sort of like alternating from positive to negative connotations) in order to examine the différence between these ideas and expose how they are actually inseperable from one another (an example provided is that a racist culture seeing themselves as superior to another relies on a given relation with the ideas of the other culture. John Searle, among others, disliked such a technique, arguing that ‘one could argue the rich are actually poor and white is actually black’ based on these premises. One is rich on what grounds?, etc.) Which is essentially what makes a review of a work of this nature difficult, as it can only examine the différence implicit in what I relay to you, what Derrida can relay to you, and what Deutscher relays in her book. It leaves this review open to such penetrating critiques, however, I’ve taken a brief moment to examine those ideas at a purely surface and ultimately flawed level for the sake of discussing not why such a review is illegitimate, but as to overview how to discuss the why and what of the review.

All that aside, there are things I truly enjoy about Derrida. A major cornerstone to Derrida is that he uses his theories to examine the works of others in an attempt to uncover some new or underlying meaning. Much of what he set out to accomplish in the initial stages has to do with his dislike for logocentrism. Derrida, in Of Grammatology, his groundbreaking work into deconstructionism that this books first few chapters primarily covers (another reason for choosing this book was to get an overview of Grammatology as a ‘supplement’ of my deficiencies in tackling W&D without having read that work first), examines Plato’s insistence on spoken word to be superior to the written word. Plato (and not just Plato – Saussure, among others, also heavily implied this belief, and Derrida’s opposition to Saussure on this matter could be looked at as a large player in his critiques on structuralism, however, I do not have the knowledge to fully explore that anytime soon) is shown as giving the spoken word up as some sort of ideal, and Derrida comments how this ideal is faulty and that many of the given deficiencies of the written word are also present in the spoken word. Another aspect I really enjoy of Derrida is the way he puts his theories to use in the social and political field, offering a view that exposes much illogical thinking, bigotry, and also lending a cautionary message to any sort of organization. Derrida, as presented by Deutscher, has a dislike for any assertion of identity, especially purity in identity of any given group (culture/political party/etc), and believes that any group must inevitably be forever split into smaller and smaller groups (a rejection yet assertion of individualism, however, carefully never reaching any ultimate purity) because all groups must have differing ideas at some level otherwise they run the risk of authoritarianism. His ideas have been used to explore gender, culture, politics, and can basically be applied to anything to help gain what he saw as a more realistic, centered and legitimate opinion. There are many examples provided for intervening in attacks or legislation against homosexuality, forcing one who takes such an opinion to really examine why they believe what they do and attempt to eventually break everything down to some impossible ideal that nullifies their argument (Derrida was a strong advocate of gay right, the feminist movement – although he cautioned that it could easily tip into the sort of misplaced thinking that it rallied against, and often spoke on behalf of difficult political topics). Another bit that I commend Derrida for is that he was not afraid to examine his own ideas through Deconstructionism, which lead to his beliefs being always modified. Deutscher brushes on the alterations of his political and cultural beliefs, particularly those concerning hospitality, mourning (death of close friends played into his deeper look at mourning), and legal justice. A reader should be cautioned that reading an overview of Derrida could give an inaccurate depiction of his ideas because they were always subject to alteration (thank you Nathan for cautioning me this way, even though I went ahead and read an overview anyways to produce a review full of contradictions. However, isn't Derrida about examining inevitable contradictions anyways?)

What makes Derrida so wonderful to me is his method is a great defense, especially in touchy subjects. Following deconstruction, you can argue against something you disagree with without ever betraying your own opinion and instead critiquing what the other person is attempt to assert and exposing the faulty ideals present. It also seems to be a beneficial tool for teachers in a classroom, a method of playing devils advocate to force a student to really understand why they believe something and to challenge them to work for their opinions. This book is a great way to get your feet wet, however, it would be a great disservice to the ideas and to yourself to stop here and not proceed into Derrida’s works (although, once again, I admit to claiming some ideal while self-consciously admitting to it in order to distract – Derrida and DFW read at the same time causes an intense introspective spiral that is both lovely and frightening) . Deutscher does provide great quotes from Derrida to explore, yet this could have been done much, much more (especially as the introduction toots its own horn for using Derrida quotes to supplement their work [supplement their deficiencies! See, you learned something!]). All in all, a great brief introduction, a great set of notes to refer to when getting to the homework back away from the safety of accessible classroom-like explanation, and a great spring board to motivate yourself into a better linguistic awareness through Derrida.
3/5

¹ Note the use of quotation marks around the words 'general overview'. Would, like in the discussion of Bergotte in Proust's Swann's Way, it show that I 'took care to isolate it in a tone of voice that was particularly mechanical and ironic, as though he had put it between quotations marks, seeming not to want to take responsibility for it, as though saying ['general overview'] you know, as it is called by silly people? But then if it was so silly, why did he say [it].' Hmmm...

² Or, perhaps, seeing as Dostoevsky's Underground Man is a bit of a literary 'anti-hero' of mine, did I simply do what I was advised not to do following human nature to do wrong simply because I can?

[Maryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

گروه سه نفری مشهور افلاطون، روسوو سوسور که دریدا معمولا به آنها اشاره می کند هر سه درگیر مساله ناب بودن هستند: نظام زبانی ناب، که آلوده نوشتار نباشد،یا طبیعتی ناب ، که آلوده فرهنگ نباشد، و صورت های ایده آل و نابی که خاص انسان باشند

ناب بودن یعنی رخدادی که به صورتی ناب پیش بینی ناپذیر است

[Mohammad Mirzaali · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتابی درخشان از یک سری درخشان. شرح روشنگرانه‌ای از مفاهیم نویافته یا برساخته‌ی دریدا که نبوغ او را به رخ خواننده می‌‌کشد؛ مفاهیمی چون واسازی یا دیفرانس. ترجمه هم خوب است و باری بر دوش متن نیست

[Hasan Abbasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب به طور خلاصه در ده بخش ایده های مقاله های مختلف دریدا را بررسی میکند ، ایده هایی مانند مساله جنسیت ، مفهوم سوگواری ، مفهوم دیفرانس و رد ، واسازی و ... که همه بر ایده اصلی و بنیادی دریدا یعنی نقد متافیزیک حضور سوار است . کتاب طبقه بندی خوبی دارد و روشن بیان شده است و برای شناخت دریدا اغاز خوبیست .

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid survey of Derrida's key works with extracts from primary texts. His main arguments are highlighted, so that a reader can recognise which areas of Derrida's philosophy appeals to them. For me that would be his response to other philosophers like Plato and Rousseau, and not so much his later philosophy.

[Mickey Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much clearer than Glendinning's book on Derrida in Oxford Library's "Very Short Introductions" series. However, for a thorough, introductory understanding of Derrida I'd suggest that one read Deutscher's volume and then follow with Glendinning's. Both are excellent.

[Golasa · Rating 2 out of 5]

من توقع بیشتری از کتاب های این مجموعه دارم و این توقع رو کتاب دریدا برآورده نکرد. ترجمه تاحدی ضعیف بود، تقریبا کلمه های مهم پاورقی نشده بود و به طور کلی در خود کتاب ارجاع و بحث بر سر متن های اصلی دریدا کم بود. سعی شده بود مفاهیمی که حول واسازی توسط دریدا تفسیر شده رو به خوبی توضیح بده که از این نظر خوب بود.

[Pilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Deutscher offers in this book a relatively easy and clear introduction to Jacques Derrida's deconstructive theory. I recommend it.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far from the solitary renegade he is caricatured as, Penelope Deutscher's Derrida is inseparable from the canon of philosophical thought he is sometimes perceived as rejecting. The term most associated with his name – déconstruction – originated as a translation of Heidegger's Destruktion; other terms are lifted from the writings of Saussure, Austin, Husserl, Benjamin, Levinas, and more besides. These thinkers and their terminology are nonetheless transformed by Derrida. He hones in on seemingly minor elements in their philosophical thought, amplifies and elaborates them, interrogating their role beyond that which is acknowledged or imagined at their point of origin.

How does Derrida suppose to transform others' thought in this way? The deconstructive method emerges from his preoccupation with how different forms of language are conceptualised, valorised, and thereby ranked in the history of philosophy. His reading of Plato's Phaedrus leads to his famous and misunderstood assertion that writing precedes speech. Understanding this claim, Deutscher explains, requires grappling with Derrida's particular methodology alongside his unconventional use of language. What is writing? Plato defines it negatively. He conceptualises writing as the mediation of thought by an act of inscription. As a result, writing, in its non-immediacy, can be deceptive. On the other hand, speech constitutes an ideal of immediacy which writing threatens. The linguistic turn of twentieth-century philosophy must lead us to question Plato's assertion of the non-mediated nature of speech. However, this necessitates recognising the illegitimacy of debasing writing on the basis of an impossible ideal of purity associated with speech. Pure, non-inscribed knowledge, Derrida suggests, is attainable through neither writing nor speech.

A deconstructive reading exposes instability by contrasting what a text may purport to say, and that which is structurally suppressed in order for it to say it. In Plato, we find that the ideal he evokes is buttressed by an illegitimate hierarchy which, when examined closely, becomes untenable. Allowing suppressed contradictions to re-enter the text can have surprising implications. For example, Plato's negative definition of writing understands it to mean simply 'the inscription of a communicated idea' (9). Derrida recognises that writing in this sense seems far removed from its everyday usage. As a result, he coins the term 'archi-writing' to describe this 'general' mode of writing. Such an act – the inscription of an idea in language – must precede all communicative acts. An idea must be inscribed in the mind before it can be spoken. Hence, we may assert that writing, or archi-writing, necessarily precedes speech.

This may seem like an academic parlour game, but throughout the book, Deutscher tries to explain that Derrida is not merely presenting a novel means of reading philosophy, but a methodology which can find various real world applications. The common thread throughout her account is Derrida's focus on purity and ideals associated with it. For example, in our daily life and public discourse, we often find accounts of the present wherein what exists here and now is the corrupted form of some exalted ideal. This results in endless, fevered questions as to how we may best restore it. Identifying the contradictions upon which such ideals are constituted, we can re-identify these purported means for restoration as ways to further shelter these ideals from sustained critical reflection.

Deutscher makes clear that, for Derrida, a text is an open field of differential forces. In his writings, textuality is not defined by its objecthood, but rather by the complex networks of relationality and differentiation between the elements that constitute it. The same applies to reality, hence Derrida's famous formulation 'il n'y a pas de hors-texte'. Derrida's claim that there is nothing outside of textuality is an assertion that everything that exists is enmeshed in the very same conditions of relationality that are unearthed through the deconstructive reading of a text. Ideals are not elevated as a result of their internal purity; rather, this phantasm of purity emerges from the intricate web of differentiated elements upon which the position of valorization occupied by an ideal depends. Apparently stable ideals that define our public discourse – authenticity and identity – break down when interrogated in this way, revealing the contradictions that underpin a veneer of internal cohesion.

Reading deconstructively must change how we perceive the text under consideration, rendering it in a sense 'alien'. This state of critical alienation serves to help us avoid merely inheriting the presuppositions of a text, and instead forces us into a recognition of the unacknowledged suppositions upon which the text was constructed. Yet what is the role of the critical reader? What is our responsibility when faced with this recognition? In his early writings, Derrida's project was predominantly destructive, directed towards attacking the hegemony of ideals upon which our social order is established. Mid- to late Derrida, however, evinces a shift in emphasis, Deutscher writes. His focus is no longer on the untenability of the ideals themselves. Instead, he explores the ways in which textuality continually relates to this constitutive impossibility.

By being attentive to these structures, Derrida suggests, we can glimpse new possibilities for transformation. As a result, his later work does not try to resolve the contradictions his early work had unearthed. Instead, Derrida explores how we might negotiate them. Fundamentally, impossibility is not simply something to be avoided. It is something to which we have an everyday relation, something which is integral to action, thought and communication. All successful communicative acts must emerge out of a relation to this alterity, thereby necessarily incorporating within themselves the possibility of their non-success. Hospitality, mourning, gift-giving, forgiveness and justice – all take place against the impossibility of their ideal, unconditional form, against a horizon of failure which must accompany every presumed success.

The discussion of impossibility seems quite obscure to me, which perhaps indicates that it is an appropriate place to end an introductory account of Derrida's thought. Before reading this short book, what little I knew had been gleaned from a smattering of second-hand accounts, often polemical in tone. Deutscher tries to avoid this kind of treatment, even when addressing some of the more controversial elements of Derrida's work: the conflict with John Searle over his reading of Austin, or his ambivalence towards the institutionalization of feminist thought. Throughout, Deutscher is keen to direct attention to various fields in which Derrida's intellectual influence is keenly felt, most notably gender theory, critical legal studies, and postcolonial thought. Alongside Derrida's own writings, suggestions for further reading include key texts in these fields, as well as some more comprehensive overviews of his thought.

[Edward]

Smart cookie this guy

[Dr. Lloyd E. Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derrida coined the term deconstructionism. He is very difficult to read and this book really helps. The authors presents ten of Derrida's ideas and discuss each idea. Here's an example of how I think the authors think about how Derrida thinks.
Derrida wants to turn Western Philosophy on its head. In terms of origins, Western Philosophy began with God as the origin, I.e., "Where does meaning come from?" Early thinkers posited that God created meaning by creating Man. In the 19th century thinkers (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche , e.g.) posited that Man created meaning by creating God. Derrida's posits the origin of meaning is neither God nor Man, but Language. For Derrida meaning originates with language. The way I have presented this, God, Man and Language serve the same function; they all explain the way we structure meaning. This is nice and tidy. However, Derrida argues nothing is nice and tidy. These are not parallel ideas. The first two begin with Being. Language doesn't begin with Being, Language exists outside of Being. To understand the question, " Where does meaning originate?" Derrida claims would require reading and rereading all these thinkers with an eye for seeing what is said in a new way. In doing this you are using Language to discern meaning. You aren't getting meaning from God or Man.
Wait a minute, I say to the Derrida I just created. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." Pretty clear. "Is it? You're reading this in English. Wasn't it translated from Greek which translated it from Hebrew?
In summary, Derrida claims we don't KNOW anything absolutely. We muddle along interpreting everything. Nothing is absolute, although, Derrida would admit, maybe this wrong. We'll never know. So why try? Because we have to. Derrida is most opposed to dogma and authoritarian governments
Here's one last example. Consider the concept "white". At one point in American history only white people could vote. But, what is a white person? If you had a thousand white ancestors and one black ancestor are you white or are you black? It depends. If the black ancestor is a parent, your chances of being labeled white are less likely than if your black ancestor is from ten generations ago. However you could probably pass as white if your black parent were very light in skin tone, had straight hair, etc. we operate as though we know what white is, but we don't. We make it up.
Likewise, immigration. Who are real Americans? I won't spell this out but you get the point.
Derrida is difficult, but worth reading. This book serves as a great introduction. Once you get hooked, Derrida will haunt you. He haunts me.

[Thom Normant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as Derrida features anecdotally in my dissertation and I knew nothing about deconstruction. I found this synopsis of Derrida's work to be clear and concise. Deutscher lays out some of the main concepts in Derrida's work alongside excerpts from the man himself as well as some brief mentions of some of the criticism of Derrida's work (although I would have liked these elements to be engaged with a little more seriously.)
In the main though, this is a very good place for a deconstruction virgin to begin. I have also read the very short introduction to deconstruction and found this book explains the key concepts in deconstructionism far more clearly than the introduction.
perhaps soon I will muster the courage to read one of Derrida's own texts...

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read some late Derrida, so I picked up this book to help me with his early work on language, writing, and speech, which I have always been hesitant to approach at all. This book was helpful in giving me more footing to begin from, but the examples used to explain Derrida were really uninteresting (for example, using gay marriage to discuss Derrida's approach to law and justice).

Deutscher writes clearly but without the energy or enthusiasm that made 'How to Read Wittgenstein' so much fun.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine quick introduction to key points in Derrida's thought and its evolution. The selections chosen from Derrida to open the chapters aren't esepcially exciting, but Deutscher's expositions really don't rely on them. A good place to start if you've only heard of Derrida and are aware of his contested place in late 20th-c. thought.

[Victoria B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still not sure I understand.

[Ingrid Lola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to Derrida's ideas. I love how it provided direct quotes and then explained them.

[Victor Bevz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book to help me write an essay on Derrida. This book definitely helped me to crack open Derrida's transcribed lecture/essays The Ends of Man (1969) and Force of Law (1992), but I think that what helped me most was Wortham's Derrida Dictionary. I want to thank Deutscher for writing such a considered manual. I'm going to use this review as a chance to reflect.

I've figured out that I'm a Derrida cynic, probably because he draws a lot from de Saussure's theory of signs. I don't subscribe to the idea that we can only interpret the world or communicate with each other in the absence of a sign composed of an abstract/ideal form (signified) and arbitrary mark (signifier), and that detracts pretty severely from the practical utility of playing with words. I think that human behaviour develops from infancy through the feedback of our initial experimental actions resulting in us getting what we want (reward) or not (punishment). In the realm of language, I also believe that utterances should be interpreted as a whole in context, rather than first by analysis of their lexemes with secondary consideration of their context. Sign theory just isn't for me.

After really pounding the books, I still don't understand the utility of "différance." I find Derrida a bit distressing to read, and I don't think I'll ever find a conceptual nut to crack in his work.

I definitely had fun making up my own examples to deconstruct. I imagine that this is pretty similar to what Derrida comes up with in his work on "unconditional hospitality", but on my own I contrasted homelessness with shelter. You can show by deconstructing the homeless/shelter opposition, where shelter is clearly privileged, that the concepts contaminate each other. One of the marks of "home" is where a person is able to spend the night, for example. Every person, regardless of dwelling, spends the night somewhere, which could be a in a park, under a stairwell, in a halfway house, on a friend's couch, in a hotel, on your own couch, in the guest bedroom after a fight with your spouse, in your bed in a rental property, in your bed in the house you own. The notion of shelter always relates back to a degree of homelessness or displacement. From there, we can analyse each instance and figure out more clearly what the problem with each kind of displacement is.

[A. B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Derrida is so frustrating! He is the opposite of everything I have come to appreciate and love about philosophy. His work seems to range from the trivial to the random to the downright mad. He is also far too political for my taste. Thankfully, my work is not in literary theory, so I do not have to tackle him beyond this short book.

This book was a good general overview of Derrida's thought -- as aptly summarised by other reviewers. It is his ideas that I find unpalatable. My rating is a reflection of my view of Derrida alone.

I include some key terms in his philosophy for future reference: Deconstruction, Intervention, Differance, Undecidables, Supplement, the Impossibility of Possibility, the impossibility of communication, purity and impurity, mourning, hospitality, giving, forgiving, justice vs the law, perfectibility.

[Pierre-Olivier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is near essential if you're trying to navigate through Derrida's writings for the first time; it should be part of "I'm trying to understand this stuff and I need all the help I can get" toolkit. Some of the chapters could be better; in particular I found Deutscher's discussion of Derrida and Law a bit hazy, and I initially needed to consult other sources to full understand Derrida's paper 'Force of Law' as an undergrad. Thus do not use this as your only source, but certainly use it.

[Robert]

This excellent little book operates by means of presenting 10 chapters each of which begins with a quote from Derrida and then commenting on its meaning and relationship to the larger body of his work. The chapters are entitled things like "Mourning and Hospitality," "The Context of Communication," and "Giving and Forgiving."

Here is an approach to Derrida that is not as twisted and turgid as Derrida himself but focuses, as Derrida did, on lasting issues in the philosophical journey that are not hopelessly minute, self-referential, and irrelevant to the task of being human.

Derrida is best portrayed here in certain very focused phrases and comments. He's well-known for his overall approach--deconstructionism--but that approach long ago got lost in the fog of nothing meaning anything and the irrelevance of the text (whatever text, be it Shakespeare or the Yellow Pages.)

At the end of this book, Deutscher highlights the simple formula: respect difference. In a way this sums Derrida up well. He is the philosopher of uncertainty (so was Socrates). His premise that nothing means anything in itself but depends on all its contradictions for meaning suggests that what we think, how we interpret, should be with done with great caution.

Here's how the principle of uncertainty applies: I have long believed, before and beside Derrida, that justice is a a relative term and the law is an arbitrary, malleable phenomenon. Courts render decisions in accord with laws; they don't render justice. What does justice mean? Fairness? The sanctity of property? The ability of 12 jurors to know exactly what happened during the commission of a "crime"? All of the above? Reference to a preexisting ideal handed down by "nature" or the Bible or English common law? If I push at the term justice long enough, I can make it impossible to define in itself or in contradistinction to something else.

Writing this, I might quickly be dismissed as an anti-authoritarian malcontent, as was Derrida on occasion. But I'm only suggesting that there are differences in everyone's approach to justice and that these differences should be dealt with respectfully and cautiously.

Deutscher successfully points out that Derrida was basically positing the need for continuous debate and negotiation as we humans manage our affairs imperfectly. In epistemological terms, Derrida questioned how anyone could know anything for certain.

An example comes with the chapter on forgiveness. I say, "I forgive you." Does that mean I have erased the act that irritated or offended me? Does that mean that on being forgiven you really accept the fact that you have transgressed against me? Are we negotiating a truce, each of us sidestepping whatever it was because we want our relationship to go on, regardless of what you believe and I believe? Is forgiveness even meaningful when the context is something trivial as opposed to something that really is unforgivable?

You murdered my daughter. I tell the cameras that I forgive you. This does happen. As a philosopher,Derrida would like to interrogate this happening. The fact is, I suspect, that Derrida accepts no facts. He sees factual assertions as provisional . . . there is more to be said.

The current trial of mass murderer James Holmes is fascinating for many reasons, one of which is the insanity defense. The question a court privileges is whether the perpetrator knew right from right, or could know right from wrong, at the time of the act. A court appointed psychiatrist says Holmes knew right from wrong and therefore was sane. We can expect that judgment to be bolstered in the jurors' minds by Holmes' notebooks, which are frequently quite rational. There was rational planning involved. There was a rational estimation of which movie theater to strike for maximum effect. Is rationality the same as sanity? It could and will be argued that rationality can be overridden by compulsions and obsessions.

Derrida does not want to tell us what to think about all this; he wants to tell us to think about it; he wants us to consider the imperfection of our systems in order to improve them, be they systems of justice, education, property protection/ownership, whatever.

His view, as Deutscher presents it, is that we all must recognize our bad conscience and personal contradictions. For example, there are few states in the world that did not have their origins in colonization that displaced earlier inhabitants. In Australia and Canada, this realization has caused significant changes in public policy. In the United States, we're done with that. The indigenous peoples get some help and pseudo-sovereign recognition, but they get no more land, and as far as reparations go, nope.

Deutscher presents a Derrida who would urge us to keep working on such an issue, recognizing that any success we achieved (or negotiated) would be bounded by failure. Part of that failure would come from incomplete cross-cultural communication. As often as non-indigenous people in the U.S. hear it, how many really feel they understand the meaning of a sacred mountain to people whose ancestors lived here long before the arrival of Europeans?

So this is a rich little book, very well done, very much worth reading.

[Nico · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this awhile ago, but from what I can recall a very pedestrian and boring introduction to Derrida. There are better ones, like Peter Salmon’s An Event, Perhaps which is a great critical biography that works more like a critical introduction to Derrida’s elusive work. Deutscher just doesn’t have the space to do Derrida’s tough work justice, but the reader would have a better time referring to Salmon’s work or just struggling with Derrida himself!

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a nutshell, Derrida is Nagarjuna reincarnated.

[Anna Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much time spent on specific examples of drug use, for example, to discuss Derrida's obsession with purity and the unnatural body-- read as if Derrida's whole method of deconstruction in general, and the meta question at stake about the valence of what is 'external' and what is 'internal', were not fully understood or communicated by the author.