Editing Jacques Derrida (section)

===1967–1972<!--linked from the 'Phenomenology vs structuralism debate (1959)' section-->===
Derrida's interests crossed disciplinary boundaries, and his knowledge of a wide array of diverse material was reflected in the three collections of work published in 1967: ''[[Speech and Phenomena]]'', ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' (initially submitted as a {{lang|fr|[[doctorat de spécialité]]}} thesis under [[Maurice de Gandillac]]),<ref name="Schrift p. 120">Alan D. Schrift (2006) ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 120.</ref> and ''[[Writing and Difference]]''.<ref name="67RonseP4">Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, pp. 4–5:{{blockquote|[''Speech and Phenomena''] is perhaps the essay which I like most. Doubtless, I could have bound it as a long note to one or the other of the other two works. ''Of Grammatology'' refers to it and economizes its development. But in a classical philosophical architecture, ''Speech...'' would come first: in it is posed, at a point which appears juridically decisive for reasons that I cannot explain here, the question of the privilege of the voice and of phonetic writing in their relationship to the entire history of the West, such as this history can be represented by the history of metaphysics and metaphysics in its most modern, critical and vigilant form: Husserl's transcendental phenomenology.}}</ref>

On several occasions, Derrida has acknowledged his debt to [[Edmund Husserl|Husserl]] and [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], and stated that without them he would not have said a single word.<ref name="67RonseP8">Derrida (1967) interview with Henri Ronse, p. 8.</ref><ref name="LetterJap">On the influence of Heidegger, Derrida claims in his "Letter to a Japanese Friend" (''Derrida and différance'', eds. [[Robert Bernasconi]] and [[David Wood (philosopher)|David Wood]]) that the word "déconstruction" was his attempt both to translate and re-appropriate for his own ends the Heideggerian terms ''Destruktion'' and ''Abbau'', via a word from the French language, the varied senses of which seemed consistent with his requirements. This relationship with the Heideggerian term was chosen over the Nietzschean term "demolition," as Derrida shared Heidegger's interest in renovating philosophy.</ref> Among the questions asked in these essays are "What is 'meaning', what are its historical relationships to what is purportedly identified under the rubric 'voice' as a value of presence, presence of the object, presence of meaning to consciousness, self-presence in so called living speech and in self-consciousness?"<ref name="67RonseP4"/> In another essay in ''Writing and Difference'' entitled "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas", the roots of another major theme in Derrida's thought emerge: the Other as opposed to the Same<ref>Derrida, J. Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas, ''Writing and Difference''. Chicago: University of Chicago. 97–192.</ref> "Deconstructive analysis deprives the present of its prestige and exposes it to something ''tout autre'', "wholly other", beyond what is foreseeable from the present, beyond the horizon of the "same"."<ref name="Caputo97P42">Caputo (1997), p. 42.</ref> Other than Rousseau, Husserl, Heidegger and [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinas]], these three books discussed, and/or relied upon, the works of many philosophers and authors, including linguist [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]],<ref>''Linguistics and Grammatology'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp. 27–73.</ref> [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]],<ref name="FromRestricted">"From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]],<ref name="Cogitothe">"Cogito and the History of Madness" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> [[Georges Bataille|Bataille]],<ref name="FromRestricted" /> [[René Descartes|Descartes]],<ref name="Cogitothe" /> anthropologist [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]],<ref>''The Violence of the Letter: From Lévi-Strauss to Rousseau'' in ''Of Grammatology'', pp. 101–140.</ref><ref>"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in ''Writing and Difference''</ref> paleontologist [[André Leroi-Gourhan|Leroi-Gourhan]],<ref>''Of Grammatology'', pp. 83–86.</ref> psychoanalyst [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]],<ref>"Freud and the Scene of Writing" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref> and writers such as [[Edmond Jabès|Jabès]]<ref>"Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book" and "Ellipsis" in ''Writing and Difference'', pp. 64–78 and 295–300.</ref> and [[Antonin Artaud|Artaud]].<ref>"La Parole soufflée" and "The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation" in ''Writing and Difference''.</ref>

This collection of three books published in 1967 elaborated Derrida's theoretical framework. Derrida attempts to approach the very heart of the [[Western intellectual tradition]], characterizing this tradition as "a search for a transcendental being that serves as the origin or guarantor of meaning". The attempt to "ground the meaning relations constitutive of the world in an instance that itself lies outside all relationality" was referred to by Heidegger as [[logocentrism]], and Derrida argues that the philosophical enterprise is ''essentially'' logocentric,<ref name="Lamont87">{{Cite journal| jstor=2780292| title=How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida| journal=American Journal of Sociology| volume=93| issue=3| pages=584–622| last1=Lamont| first1=Michele| date=November 1987| doi=10.1086/228790| s2cid=145090666| url=https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3428546/lamont_derrida.pdf?sequence=4}}</ref> and that this is a [[paradigm]] inherited from Judaism and [[Hellenistic philosophy|Hellenism]].<ref name="Borody98"/> He in turn describes logocentrism as [[Androcracy|phallocratic]], [[patriarchal]] and [[masculine|masculinist]].<ref name="Borody98"/><ref>[[Hélène Cixous]], [[Catherine Clément]] [1975] ''La jeune née''.</ref> Derrida contributed to "the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in [[Western culture]]",<ref name="Borody98">[http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/wayneb/ Wayne A. Borody] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111102140336/http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/wayneb/ |date=2 November 2011 }} (1998), pp. 3, 5, [http://kenstange.com/nebula/feat013/feat013.html "Figuring the Phallogocentric Argument with Respect to the Classical Greek Philosophical Tradition"]. [http://kenstange.com/nebula/ ''Nebula: A Netzine of the Arts and Science''], Vol. 13 (pp. 1–27).</ref> arguing that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as [[sacred/profane]], [[sign (semiotics)|signifier/signified]], [[Mind–body problem|mind/body]]), and that any text contains implicit hierarchies, "by which an order is imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised, as these hierarchies exclude, subordinate, and hide the various potential meanings."<ref name="Lamont87" /> Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as [[deconstruction]] of Western culture.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Reynolds |first=Jack |title=Jacques Derrida (1930—2004) |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/derrida/ |access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref>

In 1968, he published his influential essay "[[Plato's Pharmacy]]" in the French journal ''[[Tel Quel]]''.<ref name="Spurgin97">Spurgin, Tim (1997) [http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/pharmacy.html Reader's Guide to Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110224024836/http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/pharmacy.html |date=24 February 2011}}</ref><ref name="Graff93">Graff (1993).</ref> This essay was later collected in ''Dissemination'', one of three books published by Derrida in 1972, along with the essay collection ''Margins of Philosophy'' and the collection of interviews entitled ''[[Positions (book)|Positions]]''.