Jacques Derrida took up with vigor the Socratic vocation of philosophy as a kind of dying. Notoriously linked to discourses on "the death of the author" (and almost universally misunderstood on this score), Derrida's work was regularly haunted by ghosts. Death inscribed itself in his corpus and has now left its mark on his body, and we are left to mourn. But that is only to say that we are left with the task of deconstruction: what Derrida described as the work of mourning. It is not without reason that some of his most powerful meditationson Levinas, de Man, Deleuze, Lyotard and otherscome to us in the form of eulogies and memorials.
It has been the mistake of his criticsboth in the academy and mediato conclude from Derrida's preoccupation with death that deconstruction is simply the next nihilism. And so Derrida has been vilified as the enemy of truth, justice, the university, and many more of our cherished institutions and values. The myths and liesyes, liesabout Derrida persist even in his death (Jonathan Kandell's obituary in The New York Times was a travesty).
But this is a picture of Derrida and deconstruction that one could maintain only by failing to read him. For in the endor better, from the beginningdeconstruction is a work of love. Far from being a mere "method" for critique, Derrida was at pains to demonstrate the essentially productive aspect of deconstruction. "It is not negative," he once commented, "For me, it always accompanies an affirmative exigency. I would even say that it never proceeds without love."
The news of Derrida's death came as a surprise, though we've known of his illness for over a year now. Most surprising is how sad it has made me. I received ...
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His ministry, preparing to downsize in the wake of a new investigation, expresses regret for “misplaced trust” in a leader who used his esteem to conceal his sexual misconduct.