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Jacques Derrida
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==Early life and education== Derrida was born on 15 July 1930, in a summer home in [[El Biar]] ([[Algiers]]), Algeria,<ref name="Jackie"/> to Haïm Aaron Prosper Charles (known as "Aimé") Derrida (1896–1970), who worked all his life for the wine and spirits company Tachet, including as a travelling salesman (his son reflected the job was "exhausting" and "humiliating", his father forced to be a "docile employee" to the extent of waking early to do the accounts at the dining-room table),<ref>Powell (2006), p. 11.</ref> and Georgette Sultana Esther (1901–1991),<ref>Bennington (1991), p. 325.</ref> daughter of Moïse Safar.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 3.</ref> His family was [[Sephardic Jewish]] (originally from [[Toledo, Spain|Toledo]]) and became French in 1870 when the [[Crémieux Decree]] granted full French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria.<ref>Peeters (2013), p. 2.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.studiovisit.net/SV.Derrida.pdf |title=Jacques Derrida: The Last Interview |work=Studio Visit |date=November 2004 |orig-year=First published 10 August 2004 in ''Le Monde'' |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305215949/http://www.studiovisit.net/SV.Derrida.pdf |archive-date=5 March 2009}}{{blockquote|I took part in the extraordinary transformation of the Algerian Jews; my great-grandparents were by language, custom, etc., still identified with Arabic culture. After the Cremieux Decree (1870), at the end of the 19th c., the following generation became bourgeois.}}</ref> His parents named him "Jackie", "which they considered to be an American name", although he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris; some reports indicate that he was named Jackie after the American child actor [[Jackie Coogan]], who had become well known around the world via his role in the 1921 [[Charlie Chaplin]] film [[The Kid (1921 film)|''The Kid'']].<ref name="Powell 2006, p. 12">Powell (2006), p. 12.</ref><ref>[http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,11617,1324460,00.html Obituary] in ''The Guardian''. Retrieved 2 August 2007.</ref><ref>Cixous (2001), p. vii; also see this [http://www.themodernword.com/features/interview_caputo.html interview with Derrida's long-term collaborator John Caputo] {{webarchive| url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050524102847/http://www.themodernword.com/features/interview_caputo.html |date=24 May 2005}}.</ref> He was also given the middle name [[Élie]] after his paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou, at his [[circumcision]]; this name was not recorded on his birth certificate unlike those of his siblings, and he would later call it his "hidden name".<ref>Peeters (2013), pp. 13.{{blockquote|When he was circumcised, he was given a second forename, Elie, which was not entered on his birth certificate, unlike the equivalent names of his brother and sister.}} See also {{cite book|last=Derrida|first=Jacques |title=Jacques Derrida|chapter=Circumfession |year=1993|publisher=The University of Chicago Press |page=96}}{{blockquote|'So I have borne, without bearing, without its ever being written (12-23-76)' the name of the prophet Élie, Elijah in English ... so I took myself toward the hidden name without its ever being written on the official records, the same name as that of the paternal uncle Eugène Eliahou Derrida ...}}</ref> Derrida was the third of five children. His elder brother Paul Moïse died at less than three months old, the year before Derrida was born, leading him to suspect throughout his life his role as a replacement for his deceased brother.<ref name="Powell 2006, p. 12"/> Derrida spent his youth in Algiers and in El-Biar. On the first day of the school year in 1942, [[French Algeria|French administrators in Algeria]]—implementing [[antisemitism]] quotas set by the [[Vichy France|Vichy]] government—expelled Derrida from his [[lycée]]. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students, and also took part in numerous [[association football|football]] competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player). In this adolescent period, Derrida found in the works of philosophers and writers (such as [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], and [[André Gide|Gide]]) an instrument of revolt against family and society.<ref name="TeenBooks"/> His reading also included [[Albert Camus|Camus]] and [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]].<ref name = "TeenBooks" /> In the late 1940s, he attended the {{Interlanguage link|Lycée Bugeaud|fr}}, in Algiers;<ref name="Schrift p. 120"/> in 1949 he moved to Paris,<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="stanford"/> attending the [[Lycée Louis-le-Grand]],<ref name="Schrift p. 120"/> where his professor of philosophy was [[Étienne Borne]].<ref>Marc Goldschmidt, ''Jacques Derrida : une introduction'', 2003, p. 231.</ref> At that time he prepared for his entrance exam to the prestigious [[École Normale Supérieure]] (ENS); after failing the exam on his first try, he passed it on the second, and was admitted in 1952.<ref name="stanford"/> On his first day at ENS, Derrida met [[Louis Althusser]], with whom he became friends. A professor of his, Jan Czarnecki, was a progressive Protestant who would become a signer of the [[Manifesto of the 121]].<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qXmrAAAAQBAJ&dq=%22derrida%22+%22czarnecki%22+%22protestant%22&pg=PT82 |isbn=9780745663029 |title=Derrida: A Biography |date=27 August 2013 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons}}</ref> After visiting the [[Husserl-Archives Leuven|Husserl Archive]] in [[Leuven]], Belgium (1953–1954), he completed his master's degree in philosophy (''{{Interlanguage link|diplôme d'études supérieures|fr}}'') on [[Edmund Husserl]] (see [[#Early works|below]]). He then passed the highly competitive ''[[agrégation]]'' exam in 1956. Derrida received a grant for studies at [[Harvard University]], and he spent the 1956–57 academic year reading [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' at the [[Widener Library]].<ref name = "Caputo97P25">Caputo (1997), p. 25.</ref>
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