Timothy Stanley

Eagleton on Derrida

November 15, 2012 timothywstanley@me.com

Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: "What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this 'I' who speaks of speaking?" Even so, the Cambridge backwoodsmen were wrong. Derrida, who died of cancer in 2004 urging his friends to affirm life, was no nihilist. Nor did he want to blow up western civilisation with a stick of conceptual dynamite. He simply wished to make us less arrogantly assured that when we speak of truth, love, identity and authority, we know exactly what we mean.

Terry Eagleton, " Derrida: A Biography" The Guardian - http://gu.com/p/3bngv

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