Algerian-born founder of deconstruction who, by way of Heidegger and Nietzsche, criticised the logocentrism of Western metaphysics
Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in French Algeria, he was expelled from his lycée under the Vichy antisemitic quotas and as a teenager read Rousseau and Nietzsche as instruments of revolt. At the École Normale Supérieure he befriended Althusser; he taught there from 1964 and at the EHESS from 1984. His three books of 1967, Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena, launched deconstruction, a critique by way of Heidegger and Nietzsche of the logocentrism of Western philosophy, which put speech before writing and took presence as the measure of truth. Counted as a leading post-structuralist, he kept his distance from the label, and in Specters of Marx (1993) he declared his debt to a certain spirit of Marxism.
Also known as: Jackie Derrida
Activities and affiliations
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1960–2004
France state institutionsPhilosopher at the Sorbonne, ENS and EHESSMain
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1942Expelled from his lycée under Vichy antisemitic quotas
- 1952Entered the École Normale Supérieure
- 1957–1959Taught soldiers' children during the Algerian War
- 1960–1964Taught at the Sorbonne
- 1964–1984Taught at the ENS
- 1966Lecture at the Johns Hopkins structuralism colloquium
- 1967Of Grammatology; Writing and Difference; Speech and Phenomena
- 1981Co-founded the Jan Hus association; detained in Prague
- 1984Directeur d'études at the EHESS
- 1986–2004Professor at the University of California, Irvine
- 1993Specters of Marx