Abstract

Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria in 1930. His early work, Plato's Pharmacy, published in three sections in the journal Tel Quel, was to establish a style and a set of concerns. More orthodox philosophical papers, such as Differance, establish the intellectual grounds for the course which he now pursues. His links with French institutional life have been as innovative as his thought: he was a founder of the International College of Philosophy in Paris, and is presently attached to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Boulevard Raspail, Paris. He is a critic of institutions, yet demands the standards and continuity which flow from them. Derrida looks towards German philosophy more than any other, and clues to his programme may be found in Heidegger, Hegel and Husserl. The major concern of his work is meaning and its relation to text: semiotics is particularly associated with his name, and this involves a theory of symbols, signs and meaning. His work has also been associated with the critique of the idea of the author