Overall importance in twentieth-century thought

Valerie Justice

From book "Derrida Vis-a-vis Lacan" and other sources.
Just some points for now. I will come back and put them in paragraph form a little later.
 * "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" ("there is no outside text") - Derrida's common catch phrase
 * Something just occur before there can be interpretation, but there are no uninterpreted objects for us because it is precisely through the process of interpretation that they are first constituted as elements that belong to a phenomenal reality.
 * Deconstructive analysis of archiving
 * "Deconstruction", the word he transformed from a rare French tern to a common expression in many languages, became part of the vocabulary not only of philosophers and literary theorists but also of architects, theologians, artists, political theorists, educationists, music critics,
 * Derrida had several styles, ranging from the technical analysis of Greek terminology, through highly personal meditations to an exuberant sporting with language. He could be a highly comic writer - and an equally comic speaker, with an impeccable sense of timing - even when the issues were of the utmost gravity. This affront to convention was not born of a desire to shock; it was part of a strategy of undermining the categories - including the distinction between the serious and the non-serious - that had long dominated philosophical language. (Exceptions, such as Nietzsche, were given due credit.) Derrida's writing is strange and difficult because it has to be: to test the limits of what can be thought is to test the limits of what can be articulated., lawyers, and historians. Resistance to his thinking, too, was widespread and sometimes bitter, as it challenged academic norms and, sometimes, common sense.
 * Derrida contributed to the establishment of the Collège International de Philosophie, of which he became the first director in 1983. That same year, he also participated in the creation of an anti-apartheid foundation and a writers' committee for Nelson Mandela. In 1984, he was elected to the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales as director of studies. As at the École Normale, he gave an annual seminar, keeping it up after retirement in 1998, although with fewer sessions.
 * Derrida's later writings were increasingly concerned with ethical and political issues, including religion (both Judaism and Christianity), the question of capital punishment (to which he was vigorously opposed), and the place of animals in the tradition of western philosophy.
 * Derrida has maintained a strongly political presence, fighting for the rights of Algerian immigrants in France, against apartheid. He seeks a consistency in his life. His works are of the most frequently cited by other academics in a wide range of fields, particularly in literary criticism and philosophy.

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