Jacques Derrida influenced a great many people, fields, and frameworks throughout his life, and it only seems fitting that his death in 2004 would itself cause controversy. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Archive Fever, recounts how the effects of the actions of one faculty member at the University of California at Irvine jeopardized and ultimately cost the university
the Derrida Archives. While I am not particularly interested as to the veracity of the article’s claims (since only one side of the issue was provided as other parties in the dispute declined to provide their own voice to the story), I was captivated by a comment by Avital Ronell, who quoted some of the many letters that Derrida received while he was growing sicker from the pancreatic cancer that finally killed him.

“People sent letters saying how important he had been to them,” Ms. Ronell says. “Or he would get a letter saying ‘I’ve hated you my whole life, but now that you’re gone, I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me.’”

For the Father of Deconstruction, I find that final quote fascinating. Derrida made lots of people uncomfortable with his challenge of unspoken assumptions and frameworks in nearly everything within Western culture, yet there was something about him that was magnetic. In a way, he recalled the Socratic gadfly that people just wanted to go away away. Leave me to my beliefs, Derrida, as I was happy before you came along! I don’t want to think about new ways
of thinking! I like my life as it is! Just leave me alone!

Ahh, the status quo of my beliefs is so comfortable, why would I want anybody to challenge them? If deconstruction is such an annoying and unphilosophical phenomenon, why did it threaten so many? Could that in itself be the reason that it (he) can be hated, yet missed at the same time? Wow, would Freud have a field-day with this!

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