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Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in Algeria, who taught in Paris at the École normale supérieure and the École des hautes études…

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1930 – 2004 · El Biar, Algiers; Paris; New Haven; Irvine, California

Traditions: Continental

Schools: Structuralism & post-structuralism

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in Algeria, who taught in Paris at the École normale supérieure and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and held regular appointments in the United States. Founder of deconstruction, he argued that meaning is never fully present in a sign but produced through differences and endlessly deferred, a structure he named différance. His readings of philosophical and literary texts reshaped literary theory, interpretation and debates about language.

Key ideas

  • Différance: signs mean by differing from other signs, and their meaning is always deferred, never fully present.
  • Western philosophy has privileged presence, and speech over writing, in ways that cannot be sustained (logocentrism).
  • Deconstruction shows how texts depend on hierarchical oppositions they themselves unsettle.
  • Any sign must be repeatable in new contexts (iterability), so no context can fully fix its meaning.

Major works

  • De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology, 1967)
  • L'écriture et la différence (Writing and Difference, 1967)
  • La voix et le phénomène (Voice and Phenomenon / Speech and Phenomena, 1967)
  • Marges de la philosophie (Margins of Philosophy, 1972)

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