[Reader-list] jacques derrida: obituary

[Ananya Vajpeyi]

> Philosopher Jacques Derrida Dies at 74
>
>  Saturday October 9, 2004 9:01 PM
>
>  By ELAINE GANLEY
>
>  Associated Press Writer
>
>  PARIS (AP) - World-renowned thinker Jacques Derrida, a charismatic
>  philosopher who founded the school known as deconstructionism, has  
> died,
>  the French president's office said Saturday. He was 74.
>
>  Derrida died at a Paris hospital of pancreatic cancer, French media
>  reported, quoting friends and admirers.
>
>  The snowy-haired French intellectual taught, and thought, on both  
> sides of
>  the Atlantic, and his works were translated around the world.
>
>  Provocative and as difficult to define as his favorite subject -
>  deconstruction - Derrida e modern-day French thinker best known
>  internationally.
>
>  ``With him, France has given the world one of its greatest  
> contemporary
>  philosophers, one of the major figures of intellectual life of our  
> time,''
>  President Jacques Chirac said in a statement, calling Derrida a  
> ``citizen
>  of the world.''
>
>  Born to a Jewish family on July 15, 1930, in El Biar, Algeria, then  
> part
>  of France, Derrida wrote hundreds of books and essays. His reputation  
> was
>  launched with two 1967 publications in which he laid out basic ideas,
>  ``Writing and Difference'' and ``Of Grammatology.'' Among other works  
> were
>  the 1972 ``Margins of Philosophy'' and, more recently,
>  ``Specters of Marx'' (1993).
>
>  Derrida was known as the father of deconstructionism, a branch of
>  critical thought or analysis developed in the late 1960s and applied  
> to
>  literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and architecture.
>
>  Derrida focused his work on language, showing that it has multiple  
> layers
>  and thus multiple meanings or interpretations, challenging the notion  
> that
>  speech is a direct form of communication or even that the author of a  
> text
>  is the author of its meaning.
>
>  Deconstructionists like Derrida explored the means of liberating the
>  written word from the structures of language, opening limitless  
> textual
>  interpretations. Not limited to language, Derrida's philosophy of
>  deconstructionism was then applied to western values.
>
>  The deconstructionist approach has remained controversial, with
>  detractors even proclaiming the movement dead. So divisive were
>  Derrida's ideas that Cambridge University's plan to award him an
>  honorary degree in 1992 was forced to a vote which he won.
>
>  Critics accused Derrida of nihilism, which he adamantly denied.
>
>  ``Deconstruction is on the side of 'yes,' an affirmation of life,''
>  Derrida said in an August interview with the daily Le Monde.
>
>  Former Culture Minister Jack Lang, who knew Derrida, praised his
>  ``absolute originality'' as well as his combative spirit.
>
>  ``I knew he was ill, and at the same time, I saw him as so combative,  
> so
>  creative, so present, that I thought he would surmount his illness,''  
> Lang
>  said on France-Info radio.
>
>  Derrida was often named - but never chosen - for a Nobel Prize in
>  Literature.
>
>  In 1949, Derrida left Algeria for Paris to further his education,
>  receiving an advanced degree in philosophy from the prestigious Ecole
>  Normale Superieure in 1956. He later taught philosophy at the Sorbonne
>  University from 1960-64 and at the Ecole des Hautes Etude en Sciences
>  Sociales from 1984-99.
>
>  He also taught in the United States, at the University of California  
> at
>  Irvine and at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities.
>
>  Despite his esoteric path, Derrida said in several interviews that he
>  really wanted to be a soccer player but wasn't talented enough.
>
>  He refused to confine himself to an intellectual ivory tower,  
> fighting for
>  such things as the rights of Algerian immigrants in France and against
>  apartheid in South Africa.
>
>  French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Derrida
>  ``profoundly humanist,'' saying the philosopher spent his final years
>  working for the ``values of hospitality,'' particularly between  
> Europe and
>  the Mediterranean.
>
>  ``He wanted to build an open idea of Europe,'' a ministry statement  
> said.
>
>  As Derrida grew ill, death haunted him. In a Le Monde interview in  
> August,
>  Derrida said that learning to live means learning to die.
>
>  ``Less and less, I have not learned to accept death,'' he was quoted  
> as
>  saying. ``I remain uneducable about the wisdom of learning to die.''
>  Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
>
>   
> *********************************************************************** 
> ********

Ananya Vajpeyi, Ph.D.
Scholar of Peace 2004-05
WISCOMP:
Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace
UGF, Core 4A, Habitat Center
Lodhi Road
New Delhi 110003, INDIA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 9698 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20041010/eb82ce6c/attachment.bin