born July 15, 1930, El Biar, Alg.
died Oct. 8, 2004, Paris, France
Algerian-born French philosopher.
Derrida taught principally at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (196484). His critique of Western philosophy encompasses literature, linguistics, and psychoanalysis. His thought is based on his disapproval of the search for an ultimate metaphysical certainty or source of meaning that has characterized most of Western philosophy. Instead, he offers deconstruction , which is in part a way of reading philosophic texts intended to make explicit the underlying metaphysical suppositions and assumptions through a close analysis of the language that attempts to convey them. His works on deconstructive theory and method include Speech and Phenomena (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Of Grammatology (1967). Among his other works are Psyche: Invention of the Other (1987) and Resistances of Psychoanalysis (1996).