Derrida

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was a French-Algerian philosopher whose work transformed contemporary thought through the method he termed deconstruction. Deconstruction seeks to reveal the instability of texts and the way meaning is produced through difference, trace, and the tension between presence and absence.

Key to Derrida's project is différance, a neologism that signals both difference in meaning and its deferral in time, challenging the idea of a fixed origin or a final interpretation. He argued that Western metaphysics privileges speech over writing, presence over absence, and a central, self-sufficient origin—what he called logocentrism—thus opening analysis to marginal, contradictory, and open-ended readings.

His best-known book is Of Grammatology (1967), which argues that writing is not secondary to speech but foundational to all meaning. Other influential works include Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), Dissemination (1972), and Margins of Philosophy (1972). In later years he engaged with ethics, politics, and historical thought in texts such as The Gift of Death (1991) and Specters of Marx (1993).

Born in El Biar, Algeria, Derrida studied in Paris and taught at universities in France and abroad. His work has had a profound influence on literary theory, philosophy, law, theology, and the humanities, shaping debates on interpretation, authority, justice, and the limits of philosophical systems. He died in Paris in 2004.