This biography of Jacques Derrida (19302004) tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of 1968 and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a concept deconstruction takes wing and exerts an extraordinary influence way beyond the philosophical world, on literary studies, architecture, law, theology, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies.

In writing this compelling and authoritative biography, Benoît Peeters talked to over a hundred individuals who knew and worked with Derrida.  He is also the first person to make use of the huge personal archive built up by Derrida throughout his life and of his extensive correspondence.  Peeters book gives us a new and deeper understanding of the man who will perhaps be seen as the major philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century.

Benoît Peeters was born in Paris in 1956. Following a degree in Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris I), he went on to study for his Masters at the École Pratique des Hautes Études under the direction of Roland Barthes. He has since published over forty works on a wide variety of subjects and has written essays and biographies on Hergé, Alfred Hitchcock, and Paul Valéry.

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

PART I JACKIE 19301962

1 The Negus 19301942 9

2 Under the Sun of Algiers 19421949 19

3 The Walls of Louis-le-Grand 19491952 35

4 The École Normale Supérieure 19521956 59

5 A Year in America 19561957 80

6 The Soldier of Koléa 19571959 92

7 Melancholia in Le Mans 19591960 108

8 Towards Independence 19601962 113

PART II DERRIDA 19631983

1 From Husserl to Artaud 19631964 127

2 In the Shadow of Althusser 19631966 144

3 Writing Itself 19651966 155

4 A Lucky Year 1967 170

5 A Period of Withdrawal 1968 186

6 Uncomfortable Positions 19691971 207

7 Severed Ties 19721973 230

8 Glas 19731975 256

9 In Support of Philosophy 19731976 267

10 Another Life 19761977 288

11 From the Nouveaux Philosophes to the Estates General 19771979 298

12 Postcards and Proofs 19791981 308

13 Night in Prague 19811982 332

14 A New Hand of Cards 19821983 342

PART III JACQUES DERRIDA 19842004

1 The Territories of Deconstruction 19841986 355

2 From the Heidegger Aff air to the de Man Aff air 19871988 379

3 Living Memory 19881990 402

4 Portrait of the Philosopher at Sixty 417

5 At the Frontiers of the Institution 19911992 440

6 Of Deconstruction in America 451

7 Specters of Marx 19931995 462

8 The Derrida International 19961999 478

9 The Time of Dialogue 20002002 495

10 In Life and in Death 20032004 518

Notes 543

Sources 593

Bibliography 596

Index 605