Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Jacques Derrida’s death in Oct. 2004 eventually may become as noteworthy for others’ reactions to it as for the passing of one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophers and scholars. In a career spanning nearly fifty years of prolific output, Derrida never shied away from starting, creating, engaging and obliterating scholarly debate through a relentless pursuit of examining contradictions and paradoxes in all manner of texts in a continuous display of form as content so that any definitive reading of the man or the text is deferred endlessly. Thus, the vitriol (which is spread widely on the Internet and will not be shared here) and the admiration one finds in the comments reflects an uncertainty about the standing of the man (in)famous for providing the impetus through which "deconstruction" became simultaneously a part of everyday vernacular and a widely misunderstood concept—or non-concept, as Derrida described it. Regardless of how one feels about Derrida, post-structuralism, deconstruction or critical theory, his reach and his absence will be felt.
Repository Citation
Ouellette, Marc. "Review of Theory After Derrida: Essays in Critical Praxis, Edited by Kailash C. Baral and R. Radhakrishnan." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1–5. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss4/22