Jacques Derrida (Critical Thinkers)

Why Derrida? In accordance with the ‘similar structure’ (p. ix) of each book in this series, Routledge Critical Thinkers, I must begin by trying to respond to this question – with luck in ways that will interest and even amuse you (since the question, I confess, is not one that I am able to take altogether seriously, for reasons that I hope will become clear). No doubt there will have been some minimal understanding already presupposed here: ‘Derrida’ is not the name of some new high-energy drink or a prospective location for the next Olympic Games. ‘Why Derrida?’: I have just put the question in quotation marks, but in effect it already was, from the beginning. Here, then, is my first ‘proper Derrida quote’. He says: ‘Be alert to these invisible quotation marks, even within a word’ (LO 76). ‘Why Derrida?’ How much understanding can or should be assumed in relation to this question?

Derrida is careful to distinguish ‘undecidability’ from ‘indeterminacy’, characterizing the latter as a kind of ‘negativity’ or ‘nothingness’ (ATED 149). Like Kafka, he is fascinated by the concept of the decision, in particular insofar as it necessarily entails an experience of the undecidable, the incalculable and unprogrammable, the un-fence-in-able. As he puts it: there is no decision that is not ‘structured by this experience and experiment of the undecidable’ (ATED 116).