Various reports remembered Derrida in various ways just after his death. Most of the mainstream obituaries are frustrating to say the least, so I will only include one brilliant mention of his death from a source that we might properly call a newspaper: "Jacques Derrida 'dies' " (from The Onion). For more nuanced accounts of Derrida's life and death, see In Favor of Thinking, Spurious, tobias c. van veen, in medias res, and Jack Balkin.
For next Wednesday's post (10/20 7 p.m.), write an analytical response to the film, Derrida. You might consider some of the following questions in your analysis:
- Is there irony in the project of trying to capture the "true" Derrida in a documentary film? Do the directors realize it? What is the format of their "biography"? Does the format provide an acknowledgment of some of Derrida's ideas?
- How is Derrida depicted through images? What is his image? Is there only one? Are various images in conflict?
- How does Derrida handle the interview process? Does he resist the interview process? Is there a disconnect between what the interviewer wants to know and what Derrida wants to say, i.e. between what Derrida thinks is important and what the interviewer thinks is important?
- What parts of the film do you connect to ideas in "Structure, Sign, and Play" and how do you connect them? Do you understand specific ideas better? What is the general sense you get of Derrida's theories through the film?
As you did with last week's post, you have the option of working in a discussion of this post's title, which is yet another song lyric. What does the lyric mean? What does the song in which it appears mean? How do you make sense of the lyric in relation to poststructuralism and to Derrida's ideas?
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