Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop "deconstruction" after it emerged in the work of Martin Heidegger.

Politics

Derrida was not known to have participated in any conventional electoral political party until 1995, when he joined a committee in support of Lionel Jospin's (by then the stepfather of Daniel, his son with Sylviane Agacinski) Socialist candidacy, although he expressed misgivings about such organizations going back to Communist organizational efforts while he was a student at ENS. In the last presidential election he refused to vote in the run-off between Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac, citing a lack of acceptable choices. He was initially supportive of Parisian student protesters in May 1968 but later withdrew. He registered his objections to the Vietnam War in delivering "The Ends of Man" in the United States. In 1981 he was arrested by the Czechoslovakian government on leaving a conference in Prague that lacked government authorization, falsely charged with the "production and trafficking of drugs" he claimed were planted as he visited Kafka's grave. He was released (or "expelled" as the Czechoslovakian government put it) after the interventions of the Mitterrand government, returning to Paris on 2 January 1982. He was active in cultural activities against the Apartheid government of South Africa and on behalf of Nelson Mandela beginning in 1983. He met with Palestinian intellectuals during a 1988 visit to Jerusalem. He was active in the collective "89 for equality", which campaigned for the right of immigrants to vote in local elections. He protested the death penalty, dedicating his seminar in his last years to the production of a non-utilitarian argument for its abolition, and was active in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. While supportive of the American government in the wake of 9/11, he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Related Topics:
Political party - Lionel Jospin's - Sylviane Agacinski - Socialist - Communist - Jean-Marie Le Pen - Jacques Chirac - Vietnam War - 1981 - Czechoslovakia - Prague - Mitterrand - Paris - Apartheid - South Africa - Nelson Mandela - Palestinian - 1988 - Jerusalem - Death penalty - Mumia Abu-Jamal - 9/11 - 2003 invasion of Iraq

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