Derrida dead

Jacques Derrida, revered as the founder of the deconstructionist school, has died at the age of 74, his entourage said. Derrida, who had bee...

Jacques Derrida, revered as the founder of the deconstructionist school, has died at the age of 74, his entourage said. Derrida, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, died in a Paris hospital on Friday night.

His prolific writings, criticised by some as obscure and nihilist, argue that there are multiple meanings in literature — and also in fields such as art, music, architecture — not necessarily intended or even understood by the creator of the work.

Born in Algeria in 1930, Derrida went to France’s celebrated Ecole Normale Superieur in 1952, then became an assistant professor at Harvard in the US and the Sorbonne in Paris. Throughout his life he taught both in France and in the US. Among the influences on his thought was the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the psychoanlayst Sigmund Freud. When Britain’s Cambridge University planned to award him an honorary degree in 1992, many staff protested and his writings were denounced as ‘‘absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction’’. Finally, his degree was approved by 336 votes to 204. — (AFP)

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