Ecrits

Écrits is a collection of essays by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, first published in French in 1967. The volume gathers a range of Derrida’s writings from the 1960s and early 1970s, presenting his developing approach of deconstruction and his critique of the central assumptions of Western metaphysics, including the priority often given to speech over writing and the idea of a fixed, self-present meaning.

The essays in Écrits examine language, writing, and signs, and trace how texts circulate and acquire meaning within cultures. Derrida challenges binary oppositions such as presence and absence, speech and writing, center and margin, arguing that writing is not a mere supplement but a key site of différance and interpretation. The collection is known for its rigorous close reading, its interrogation of concepts like origin, truth, and authority, and its willingness to unsettle established ways of thinking about language and knowledge.

Publication history and reception have made Écrits a foundational text in post-structuralist thought. The work has been translated into English and reissued in several editions, often under the title Écrits: A Selection, and has been widely used in philosophy, literary theory, anthropology, and critical theory. It helped establish Derrida as a leading figure in contemporary philosophy and brought prominent attention to deconstruction as a method for questioning assumed hierarchies in texts and institutions.

Impact and significance continue to be felt in humanities scholarship. Écrits is frequently cited for its methodological innovations, its destabilization of essentialist notions of meaning, and its influence on debates about text, authorship, and the nature of reading.