derrida died last night
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3729844.stm

not sure how many folk have had a passage through deconstruction and its afterburn (following the de man business)..but this news is kind of sad.

i stopped reading derrida after "spectres of marx"--couldn't take him seriously any more in his claims to be political. but the earlier work was and remains interesting, useful even.

thoughts on derrida's death and/or his work?


post hoc:

it is typical that the bbc obit would get deconstruction wrong, presenting it as if all that was going on was a kind of facile relativism. there are problems with the approach derrida developed--and it is, in the end, a single type of move repeated in various contexts--but this is not one of them.

Well, Derrida has been one of my favorite philosophers for a while, and even if his work in his later years wasn't the same quality as his earlier stuff, he had a great mind.

I'm home for the weekend, but I'm sure my philosopher roommate will make particular mention of this when I get back. I know he particularly liked Derrida (not his most favorite, but one of them at least).

I'll miss Jacques Jacques. Not overmuch, but a little. I wouldn't haved minded if his sloppy followers were the one's to have been forever silenced and he got another 20 years to share his thoughts.