An Obituary: JACQUES DERRIDA
By Manjeet Chaturvedi *
The language, the writing and the speech, the words, the text and their meanings are not structured on the deep foundation - of meaning; excavation of what lies beneath is not theory labor. In the text, it is neither contextual nor limited to author so the meaning is beyond authority and not subservience even to its primary thinkers and hence free. Such as 'civil' and 'savage' do not have cultural or linguistic base but are mere constructs of political and economic institutions, self-serving to cruel interests by textualization of deep roots of binary opposites structured as legitimate/illegitimate, rational/irrational. In postmodern seasons, Jacques Derrida, the Algerian born** French philosopher, after Nietzsche (demolition) and Heidegger (destruktion), was reborn in 1967 in poststructuralist discourse with the publication of his works, Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, this time on the demolition squad to demolish as if modernity was a textual project, with a new strategy of analysis – deconstruction. An inquiry as a tool into the hands of the reader or the receiving end (of the text) and its ‘states’ to pick up ever changing, unfixed, properly diversified meaning, this textual strategy is itself a happening. The author is not the creator of meanings in words but only proposes a text, only one of the arguments. The text is over but the human search of meaning or meanings continue infinitely to break down ideas hidden in its depth and in this way the ‘practice’ or the ‘politics’ impenetrable at the moment , Derrida possibly sensed, could be made accessible to reinterpretations. In his life time deconstruction was remarkably applied as a strategy to the debasing of hierarchical opposition between genders and between cultures though Derrida nowhere felt it to be central to his thought.
.
A prolific writer, later in life producing almost every year new works in “human sciences”, Derrida himself received education in 1952 at Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) by two of the most celebrated philosophers of his day Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault; but interestingly they were two minds on entirely different tracts from whom he made his departure to read and renovate philosophy. Beginning his own career of philosophy teaching, earlier he taught French and English languages to army children during 1957-1959, Derrida taught at Sorbonne from 1960 to 1964 and then at ENS from 1964 to 1984 but in between he held many teaching positions at American universities including John Hopkins, Yale and California. The architect of ‘deconstruction’, an intellectual liberty of interpretation from permanence of language power, although honored by many British and American universities and institutions, was in fraught with controversies in various ways: in personal life as he was jailed by Czech government for trafficking of drugs, in academic as proposed Honoris causa was put to vote by members of University of Cambridge in a rare instance, in intellectual circle he was described as the annihilator of philosophy and even truth.
Derrida, the theme of a documentary film, the subject of more than 400 books and the problem of more than 5oo dissertations, *** ‘perhaps the world’s most famous philosopher if not the only famous philosopher,’****breathed his last on October 8, 2004 after an unsuccessful battle with pancreatic cancer in Paris.
I was in Paris on October 6, 2004 not knowing about Derrida’s physical ailment and not the least thinking of him. But in a hotel room in Interlaken, Switzerland on 8th evening, when BBC announced Derrida’s death I felt deserted and then lonesome and wanted to talk to some one who knew my language about the theorist’s activism: about his support to student revolution of 1968, his contributions to Tel Quel, a leftist journal, his ‘The Ends of Men’ against the Vietnam war, his protest on apartheids in South Africa, and now his opposition to American invasion of Iraq. When Vishwanath Pandey asked me to write Derrida’s obituary, I agreed because Derrida was involved in praxis, protests, and questions wherever the ‘clash’ was attempted like a coup to obtain a permanent history, ending all other histories and in them burying all other civilizations, and their tranquil forms by finding violent excuses. Because what else one could expect from a nonfiction terminator? Because I was sad.
*Professor of Sociology, Banaras Hindu University
**Jacques Derrida, born in El-Biar, Algeria (A French Colony those days) in 1930 to Jewish parents, came to France in 1949
***John Rawlings, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, 1999
****Dinitia Smith, Philosopher Gamely in Defense of His Ideas, New York Times Conversation with Derrida
The language, the writing and the speech, the words, the text and their meanings are not structured on the deep foundation - of meaning; excavation of what lies beneath is not theory labor. In the text, it is neither contextual nor limited to author so the meaning is beyond authority and not subservience even to its primary thinkers and hence free. Such as 'civil' and 'savage' do not have cultural or linguistic base but are mere constructs of political and economic institutions, self-serving to cruel interests by textualization of deep roots of binary opposites structured as legitimate/illegitimate, rational/irrational. In postmodern seasons, Jacques Derrida, the Algerian born** French philosopher, after Nietzsche (demolition) and Heidegger (destruktion), was reborn in 1967 in poststructuralist discourse with the publication of his works, Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, this time on the demolition squad to demolish as if modernity was a textual project, with a new strategy of analysis – deconstruction. An inquiry as a tool into the hands of the reader or the receiving end (of the text) and its ‘states’ to pick up ever changing, unfixed, properly diversified meaning, this textual strategy is itself a happening. The author is not the creator of meanings in words but only proposes a text, only one of the arguments. The text is over but the human search of meaning or meanings continue infinitely to break down ideas hidden in its depth and in this way the ‘practice’ or the ‘politics’ impenetrable at the moment , Derrida possibly sensed, could be made accessible to reinterpretations. In his life time deconstruction was remarkably applied as a strategy to the debasing of hierarchical opposition between genders and between cultures though Derrida nowhere felt it to be central to his thought.
.
A prolific writer, later in life producing almost every year new works in “human sciences”, Derrida himself received education in 1952 at Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) by two of the most celebrated philosophers of his day Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault; but interestingly they were two minds on entirely different tracts from whom he made his departure to read and renovate philosophy. Beginning his own career of philosophy teaching, earlier he taught French and English languages to army children during 1957-1959, Derrida taught at Sorbonne from 1960 to 1964 and then at ENS from 1964 to 1984 but in between he held many teaching positions at American universities including John Hopkins, Yale and California. The architect of ‘deconstruction’, an intellectual liberty of interpretation from permanence of language power, although honored by many British and American universities and institutions, was in fraught with controversies in various ways: in personal life as he was jailed by Czech government for trafficking of drugs, in academic as proposed Honoris causa was put to vote by members of University of Cambridge in a rare instance, in intellectual circle he was described as the annihilator of philosophy and even truth.
Derrida, the theme of a documentary film, the subject of more than 400 books and the problem of more than 5oo dissertations, *** ‘perhaps the world’s most famous philosopher if not the only famous philosopher,’****breathed his last on October 8, 2004 after an unsuccessful battle with pancreatic cancer in Paris.
I was in Paris on October 6, 2004 not knowing about Derrida’s physical ailment and not the least thinking of him. But in a hotel room in Interlaken, Switzerland on 8th evening, when BBC announced Derrida’s death I felt deserted and then lonesome and wanted to talk to some one who knew my language about the theorist’s activism: about his support to student revolution of 1968, his contributions to Tel Quel, a leftist journal, his ‘The Ends of Men’ against the Vietnam war, his protest on apartheids in South Africa, and now his opposition to American invasion of Iraq. When Vishwanath Pandey asked me to write Derrida’s obituary, I agreed because Derrida was involved in praxis, protests, and questions wherever the ‘clash’ was attempted like a coup to obtain a permanent history, ending all other histories and in them burying all other civilizations, and their tranquil forms by finding violent excuses. Because what else one could expect from a nonfiction terminator? Because I was sad.
*Professor of Sociology, Banaras Hindu University
**Jacques Derrida, born in El-Biar, Algeria (A French Colony those days) in 1930 to Jewish parents, came to France in 1949
***John Rawlings, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, 1999
****Dinitia Smith, Philosopher Gamely in Defense of His Ideas, New York Times Conversation with Derrida
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