Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

Jacques Derrida was born into a French-Jewish family in French colonial Algeria. Derrida began publishing in the early 1960s, but really took off as a philosopher of major reputation in 1967 when he published three major books:Of Grammatology , Speech and Phenomena , Writing and Difference. Derrida’s increasing fame across the world in many fields, and his prolific output led to constant publications, translations, interviews, and conferences across the world. His publications are influential in phenomenology, hermeneutics, aesthetics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, as well as a wide range of related work across the social sciences and humanities. In the English-speaking world, the dominant mode of analytic philosophy emphasises logical precision, conceptual clarity and a direct literal style of argument that strongly contrasts with Derrida’s own inclination to write in a literary style rich with allusion, playfulness and indirectness exploiting all the resources of language.