Jacques Derrida

From Geography

This page is in progress by Thijs Koolhof and Tobias Geerdink.

Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in El-Bair, Algiers. He developed the critical technique known as deconstruction, which is a method of analysis that seeks to critique and destabilize apparently stable systems of meaning in discourse by illustration their contradictions, paradoxes and contingent nature.

Life

Derrida was born in Algiers, then French Algeria, into a Jewish family. He spent his youth in El-Bair where he dreamed of becoming a professional football player but also read works of philosophers and writers such as Rousseau, Camus, Nietzsche and Gide. He began to think seriously about philosophy around the time he moved to France where he stayed the rest of his live.