Jacques Derrida — father of deconstruction and the patron saint of undeserved tenured faculty positions — died on Friday. Rest in peace, Jacques.
7 thoughts on “Not Just “Death,” But Death Itself”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Jacques Derrida — father of deconstruction and the patron saint of undeserved tenured faculty positions — died on Friday. Rest in peace, Jacques.
Comments are closed.
Love your title.
Teacher: “Jacques? Jacques?”
Student: “He’s absent today, Ma’am.”
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I liked your headline, too.
Won’t be missed.
On the list of 20th century writers (the terms philospher and thinker would not be appropriate) who will not even be forgotten in the 22nd century.
If his gibberish is being “read” at the UofC, it is further proof that the old Hutchins College needs to be revived.
When I was an undergrad at the U. of C. in the ’80s the philosophy department held a symposium that attempted to bridge the divide between Anglo-American analytical philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy (deconstruction, semiotics, phenomenology, etc.). A dapper Frenchman got up to the podium and opened the discussion by noting, “Philosophy is a text.” The American grad students lining the back of the room broke out in laughter.
Although Derrida is known for deconstructionism he will, in time, became better known as the first recipient of the medical procedure that bears his name, Derrida Bypass Procedure.
Following WWII, few Frenchmen (about 11 in actual number), when asked what they did in the Resistance, were able to remember anything about either the War or the Resistance. General DeGaulle (peace be upon him) found this intolerable for his plans to restore France as a world luminary, and determined that this national memory loss of how France single handedly defeated the Third Reich was caused by a lack of nutrition to the brain.
DeGaulle commissioned the finest French physicians to come up with a procedure to correct this problem. This elite group determined that they could supercharge the flow of nutrients to the brain, grow intellect and correct memory loss, by bypassing the digestive process and connecting the large intestine directly to the brain. Jaques Derrida was the first to undergo this procedure. First other Frenchmen like Focault, and then the rising class of East Coast and Left Coast intellectuals in the US, amazed and impressed at what was coming out of Derrida’s mouth, rushed to have the Derrida Bypass Procedure themselves. And the rest is history.
Where Derrida leads may Chomsky follow.
From deconstruction to decomposition.