In memoriam : Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

Regardless of whatever one believes to be true of Derrida's contribution to thought, it is true, at a more general level, that for the most part philosophers have taken little time and expended even less effort to understand anthropology and the social sciences; even fewer have taken anthropology as philosophically relevant. It is, of course, true that philosophers have sometimes sought to familiarize themselves with some elements of the anthropological literature. But these familiarizations have been, in the main, cursory--forays used primarily to justify theses already held. Derrida's work is a rare and honourable exception to this tendency, one which has, for the most part continued as before. Derrida's contribution, in our view, lies in making the underpinnings of our thought apparent to us. In revealing the Romantic aspects common to the thought of both Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss, he does not imagine that he has exonerated himself from these tendencies, nor even that we should condemn them for those dimensions of their writing. What he does do, though, is show how our disciplines are linked with our cultural heritage, and how this in turn makes any thought of truly standing outside what we observe untenable.