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Obituary

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

by Lisa Sangoi

“In him, France gave the world one of the major figures of the intellectual life of our times,” announced the French president Jacques Chirac, on the day after Jacques Derrida's death. Derrida was born to a Jewish family in El-Biar, Algeria, where he experienced an environment that was rather hostile towards Jews. He was expelled from one school because there was a 7% limit on the Jewish population, and he later withdrew from another school due to anti-semitism. In 1952 he began his study of philosophy at the prestigious École Normale Supèrieure in Paris (where Sartre, Simon de Beavoir, and the majority of French intellectuals and academics began their careers). He later taught there for almost twenty years.

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