Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he applied in some of his texts, and which he developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophyVincent B. Leitch Postmodernism: Local Effects, Global Flows, SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 27. although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disavowed the word "postmodernity".Augustine and Postmodernism, in response to George Heffernan of Merrimack College. Indiana University Press ISBN 0-253-34507-3 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21731-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) page 42:
During his career, Derrida published over 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He has had a significant influence on the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law,"Critical Legal Studies Movement" in "The Bridge"GERMAN LAW JOURNAL, SPECIAL ISSUE: A DEDICATION TO JACQUES DERRIDA , Vol. 6 No. 1, 1–243, 1 January 2005. anthropology,"Legacies of Derrida: Anthropology", Rosalind C. Morris, Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume: 36, pp. 355–389, 2007. historiography,"Deconstructing History", published 1997 (2nd. edn. Routledge, 2006). applied linguistics, sociolinguistics,"The sociolinguistics of schooling: the relevance of Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin", Michael Evans, 01/2012; . In Edith Esch and Martin Solly (eds.), The Sociolinguistics of Language Education in International Contexts, Peter Lang, pp. 31–46. psychoanalysis, music, architecture, and political theory.
Into the 2000s, his work retained major academic influence throughout the United States, continental Europe, South America and all other countries where continental philosophy has been predominant, particularly in debates around ontology, epistemology (especially concerning social sciences), ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. For the last two decades of his life, Derrida was Professor in Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. In most of the Anglosphere, where analytic philosophy is dominant, Derrida's influence is most presently felt in literary studies due to his longstanding interest in language and his association with prominent literary critics. He also influenced architecture (in the form of deconstructivism), music"Deconstruction in Music – The Jacques Derrida", Gerd Zacher Encounter, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2002. (especially in the musical atmosphere of hauntology), art,E.g., "Doris Salcedo", Phaidon (2004), "Hans Haacke", Phaidon (2000). and art criticism.E.g. "The return of the real", Hal Foster, October – MIT Press (1996); "Kant after Duchamp", Thierry de Duve, October – MIT Press (1996); "Neo-Avantgarde and Cultural Industry – Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975", Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, October – MIT Press (2000); "Perpetual Inventory", Rosalind E. Krauss, October – MIT Press, 2010.
Particularly in his later writings, Derrida addressed ethical and political themes in his work. Some critics consider Speech and Phenomena (1967) to be his most important work, while others cite Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Margins of Philosophy (1972). These writings influenced various activists and political movements. He became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious abstruseness of his work made him controversial.Lawlor, Leonard. "Jacques Derrida". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu. 22 November 2006; last modified 6 October 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
Early life and education Derrida was born on 15 July 1930, in a summer home in El Biar (Algiers), Algeria, to Haïm Aaron Prosper Charles (known as "Aimé") Derrida (1896–1970), who worked all his life for the wine and spirits company Tachet, including as a travelling salesman (his son reflected that the job was "exhausting" and "humiliating", and that his father forced him to be a "docile employee" to the extent of waking early to do the accounts at the dining-room table),Powell (2006), p. 11. and Georgette Sultana Esther (1901–1991),Bennington (1991), p. 325. daughter of Moïse Safar.Peeters (2013), p. 3. His family was Sephardic Jewish (originally from Toledo) and became French in 1870 when the Crémieux Decree granted full French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria.Peeters (2013), p. 2. His parents named him "Jackie", "which they considered to be an American name", although he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris; some reports indicate that he was named Jackie after the American child actor Jackie Coogan, who had become well known around the world via his role in the 1921 Charlie Chaplin film The Kid.Powell (2006), p. 12.Obituary in The Guardian. Retrieved 2 August 2007.Cixous (2001), p. vii; also see this interview with Derrida's long-term collaborator John Caputo . He was also given the middle name Élie after his paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou, at his circumcision; this name was not recorded on his birth certificate unlike those of his siblings, and he would later call it his "hidden name".Peeters (2013), pp. 13. See also
Derrida was the third of five children. His elder brother Paul Moïse died at less than three months old, the year before Derrida was born, leading him to suspect throughout his life his role as a replacement for his deceased brother. Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar.
On the first day of the school year in 1942, French administrators in Algeria—implementing antisemitism quotas set by the Vichy government—expelled Derrida from his lycée. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students, and also took part in numerous football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers (such as Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Gide) an instrument of revolt against family and society. His reading also included Camus and Sartre. He was also drawn into works by André Gide, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Jacques Rousseau in his teenage years."Jacques Derrida." Newsmakers, Gale, 2006. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1618004214/BIC?u=lln_pebr&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=ae8e94e1. Accessed 9 June 2026.
In the late 1940s, he attended the , in Algiers; in 1949 he moved to Paris, attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where his professor of philosophy was Étienne Borne.Marc Goldschmidt, Jacques Derrida : une introduction, 2003, p. 231. At that time he prepared for his entrance exam to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure (ENS); after failing the exam on his first try, he passed it on the second, and was admitted in 1952. On his first day at ENS, Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends. A professor of his, Jan Czarnecki, was a progressive Protestant who would become a signer of the Manifesto of the 121. After visiting the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium (1953–1954), he completed his master's degree in philosophy () on Edmund Husserl. He then passed the highly competitive agrégation exam in 1956. Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and he spent the 1956–57 academic year reading James Joyce's Ulysses at the Widener Library.Caputo (1997), p. 25.
Career
During the Algerian War of Independence of 1954–1962, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959. Following the war, from 1960 to 1964, Derrida taught philosophy at the Sorbonne, where he was an assistant of Suzanne Bachelard (daughter of Gaston Bachelard), Georges Canguilhem, Paul Ricœur (who in these years coined the term hermeneutics of suspicion), and Jean Wahl.Bennington (1991), p. 330. His wife, Marguerite, gave birth to their first child, Pierre, in 1963. In 1964, on the recommendation of Louis Althusser and Jean Hyppolite, Derrida received a permanent teaching position at the ENS, which he kept until 1984. In 1965 Derrida began an association with the Tel Quel group of literary and philosophical theorists, which lasted for seven years.Powell (2006), p. 58. Derrida's subsequent distance from the Tel Quel group, after 1971, was connected to his reservations about their embrace of Maoism and of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.Leslie Hill, The Cambridge introduction to Jacques Derrida: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 55.
With "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", his contribution to a 1966 colloquium on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University, his work began to gain international prominence. At the same colloquium Derrida would meet Jacques Lacan and Paul de Man, the latter an important interlocutor in the years to come.Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 331 A second son, Jean, was born in 1967. In the same year, Derrida published his first three books—Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology.
In 1980, he received his first honorary doctorate (from Columbia University) and was awarded his State doctorate (doctorat d'État) by submitting to the University of Paris ten of his previously published books in conjunction with a defense of his intellectual project under the title "L'inscription de la philosophie : Recherches sur l'interprétation de l'écriture" ("Inscription in Philosophy: Research on the Interpretation of Writing").Powell (2006), p. 145. The text of Derrida's defense was based on an abandoned draft doctoral thesis he had prepared in 1957 under the direction of Jean Hyppolite, along with Maurice de Gandillac, at the ENS entitled "The Ideality of the Literary Object" ("L'idéalité de l'objet littéraire");Jacques Derrida – Editions de Minuit his 1980 dissertation was subsequently published in English translation as "The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations". In 1983, Derrida collaborated with Ken McMullen on the film Ghost Dance. Derrida appears in the film as himself and also contributed to the script.
Derrida traveled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions. Derrida became full professor () at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris from 1984 (he had been elected at the end of 1983). With François Châtelet and others he in 1983 co-founded the Collège international de philosophie (CIPH; 'International college of philosophy'), an institution intended to provide a location for philosophical research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academia. He was elected as its first president. In 1985 Sylviane Agacinski gave birth to Derrida's third child, Daniel."Obituary: Jacques Derrida", by Derek Attridge and Thomas Baldwin, The Guardian, 11 October 2004. Retrieved 19 January 2010.
On 8 May 1985, Derrida was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to Class IV – Humanities, Section 3 – Criticism and Philology.