On Jacques Derrida: The politics of mourning

This article, written in November 2004 in reply to the multitude of responses to the death of French philosopher-theorist Jacques Derrida in October of that year, is intended, nearly three years after his passing, to correct prevalent misreadings of Derrida's work and, it is hoped, to introduce his corpus (its breadth and depth) to a new 'audience'. Rethinking History did not publish an obituary at the time, and given the impact of Derrida's 'deconstructive readings' on the discipline of 'History'-as well as a multitude of other disciplines (Philosophy, Literature, Political Theory) the author's argument is that his corpus demands to be counter-signed affirmatively by a new generation of historians/theorists etc.