Jacques Derrida
has had an enormous impact on intellectual life around the world. He came
into prominence in America with his critical approach or methodology or
philosophy of
deconstruction,
and it is this line of thought that continues to identify him.
This French
philosopher has been influenced by politics and nowadays we are able to
read some of his books talking about politics, in those books we discover
the influence of communism, Marxism, feminism ...
Deconstruction
was described by Derrida as a prolegomenon to--or perhaps even a substitute
for--philosophy as traditionally conceived. It would be an activity allowing
the aporias, or paradoxes, imbedded in every philosophical text to emerge
without forcing a "violent" consistency upon them.
For Derrida
deconstruction is an attitude, in the root sense
of that word.
It is a position one has with regard to something.
Deconstruction
is a form of what is called imminent critique.
Deconstructive
criticism is not intended to suggest a way to make something (a book, a
list of qualities of an object, ...) finally complete, but to show its
necessary incompleteness because you can always add more and more things
to something like a book, you can always think something more to explain
or to write; a work is never finished under a decontructive point of view.
