The purpose of this write-up is to provide some biographical details about Derrida's life, and a quick-and-dirty introduction to his work. Others can do a much better job of explaining his difficult and interesting work than I.
The brilliant and original French philosopher and father of deconstruction Jacques Derrida was born in 1930 in El-Biar, Algeria. Growing up in Algeria, he saw racism around him and experienced anti-semitism first hand, at one point being expelled from school because he was Jewish. Though Derrida has always struck me as the consummate intellectual brainiac, as a young man he was apparently rather good at competitive sports and not so good at academics. He wanted to be a professional soccer player, but says he wasn't good enough to succeed at this. He failed his baccalaureat (the French equivalent of a high school diploma) the first time he attempted it, in 1947, though he passed the next year. In 1949 he went to Paris as a boarding student; he failed the entrance exam to the École Normale Supérieure twice before passing and being admitted in 1952. He then studied psychology and ethnology and dabbled, apparently, in far-left non-communist militancy. Ah, youth!
In 1955 he attempted the philosophy agregation, which would qualify him for tenure at a state school, but failed the oral portion of the exam; he passed it the following year. In 1956 he went to Harvard for a year, translating Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry into French; his introduction to this book, which was published in 1962, won him the Jean Cavailles Prize in modern epistemology. From 1957 to 1959 he engaged in that popular profession for the young and rootless, language teacher - in his case, French and English - to children of soldiers in Algeria; this was apparently how he filled his military service.
Derrida began teaching university in the 1960s: at the Sorbonne from 1960 to 1964, at the École Normale Supérieure from 1965 to 1984, and since the early 70s also in the United States, lecturing at American universities such as Johns Hopkins, Yale, and the University of California at Irvine, where he has been on faculty. While in the States he prefers to spend his time in New York, and apparently often lectures at universities in or near the city. Currently he is director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences in Paris.
Derrida is a quirky character and an iconoclast. For a long time after he became famous through his lectures and writings he apparently refused to defend his doctoral thesis - he finally did so in 1980, when he was 50. He also refused to have his photograph published, though he's since loosened up on that, and photos of him are rather common now; he's a vital, intense-looking man.
And the writings, of course. In the early 60s he published articles in the journals Tel Quel and Critique, and in a fell swoop in 1967 came out with three landmark texts: Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Speech and Phenomena (about Husserl). These texts introduced deconstruction, an approach or strategy for analysis of texts which challenges dominant western assumptions of truth, identity, and meaning. Instead of reading a text (a word which Derrida takes to have a very broad meaning, from a book to a painting to a TV show, or even, I suppose, a node) for clear, direct communication from the author to the reader - for a "truth" - Derrida uncovers multiple layers of meaning at work, showing that language and meaning are constantly shifting and that language confounds the author's desire to present ideas unequivocally. Derrida questions the philosophical assumption of logocentrism, that is, the idea that the meanings of words refer to something in the structure of reality itself. Logocentrism is intextricably linked with phonocentrism, the idea that speech is a more direct way to communicate than writing; this too rests on the assumption that there is something "real" to which a speaker's words refer. Derrida argues instead that an author's intentions in speaking cannot be unconditionally accepted, thus further multiplying interpretations. Deconstruction thus challenges the belief that the wor(l)d is simple and can be known with certainty; deconstruction takes place as the experience of the impossible, says Derrida.
I have never heard Derrida speak, but I understand it is quite an experience. He's a well-dressed, elegant man with a mane of white hair, and is said to be an interesting and, for many, exasperating speaker. (Yes, he does talk like that, and even more so.) He uses pun, poetry, metaphor and allusion to illustrate his philosophy, making each lecture something of a public performance. He revels in contradiction and ambiguity, which many find extremely unsettling. On top of all this, he is extremely erudite, drawing from the works of a host of thinkers with intimidating ease.
In 1973 he published three more powerhouses: Dissemination, Margins of Philosophy (essays), and Positions (interviews). These were followed by other books, including Memoires, for Paul de Man in 1986 and Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question in 1987, each of which unleashed a storm of controversy as many felt that Derrida did not adequately criticize de Man and Heidegger for their Nazi sympathies. Indeed, critics charge that Derrida's ideas subvert any search for meaning and politics and thus lead to moral and ethical relativism.
Derrida does not agree with this assessment, and in fact has devoted considerable time to social justice issues, speaking out against apartheid and for dissident Czechoslovakian intellectuals. He argues that we must each take responsibility for our own truth-making at every moment of our lives. Truth is not preordained or "given" to us by a higher power; rather, what we take as true involves a decision on our part for which we alone are responsible.
Derrida holds honorary doctorates from Columbia University, the University of Essex, the New School for Social Research, Williams College, and Cambridge University. (This latter award caused a great controversy, and the dons ended up voting on whether or not he should get the degree: 336 yay, 204 nay was the final tally.) He lives in a suburb of Paris with his wife of 36 years, Marguerite; they have two sons.
Love him or hate him, Derrida's work has had an indelible impact on 20th and 21st century thought. There are several extensive webliographies on Derrida. See, for example,
dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophers/Derrida,_Jacques/
www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/jdind.html
www.quodlibet.net/derrida.shtml
www.derridathemovie.com/bio.html
www.connect.net/ron/derrida.html
prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/
www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20NYT%20-%20page.htm