Jacques Derrida -- By: Katlyn Graupner

Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 08:1 (May 2010)
Article: Jacques Derrida
Author: Katlyn Graupner


Jacques Derrida

Katlyn Graupner

Patrick Henry College

Jacques Derrida is the founder of a school of thought termed “deconstruction.” His views have had specific influence on literary theory and criticism, but have also addressed broad philosophical questions concerning reality, truth, and meaning. His “precursors and forerunners,” to whom he responded, include “Freud, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, Marx, Nietzsche, [and] Saussure.”1

Born in Algeria in 1930, he later studied and wrote in France. He and his wife, psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier, settled in the Paris suburbs. In 1996 he attracted attention in America at a structuralism conference at Johns Hopkins University. In 2004, he died of cancer in Paris at age seventy-four.2

Derrida himself avoids giving clear definitions for the terms that he uses. The general idea of deconstruction is that it dissects the relationship between opposing ideas, and then turns that relationship around. In his book On Deconstruction, Jonathan Culler attempts several definitions, one of which is that “to deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical oppositions on which it relies” by using a certain method.3 But before analyzing the deconstructive method, first let us put Derrida’s ideas in context.

Before the theory of deconstruction attempted to take things apart, the literary theory of structuralism attempted to put things together. One author, Robert Scholes, argues that structuralism “is a response to the need . . . for a ‘coherent system’ that would unite the modern sciences.”4 Or, as David Richter explains, structuralism looks at life through language and the system of language.5 In other words, structuralism views life as an ordered system, and deconstruction attempts to deconstruct that order.

The Sign

For example, let us consider the sign. From a structuralist perspective, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) explains the relationship between the signified, or concept, and the signifier, or sound-image. The two parts—signified and signifier—together form a whole, the sign.6 Saussure views language as an organized structure.

Many philosophers view language as objectively referring to something. The signifier refers to a signified that exists in reality, as Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language argues.

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