Jacques Derrida, the French thinker infamous for the theory of interpretation known as Deconstruction, died at the end of a year-long struggle with pancreatic cancer this past Saturday. He was 74 years old. Born in Algeria, he was educated at the …cole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and taught at the Sorbonne and Yale, among other places. Among the challenging yet broadly influential publications he is known for are Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Limited Inc., and Dissemination.

In a recent interview in the French paper Le Monde, he said: “Learning to live should also mean learning to die, taking into account and accepting the absolute nature of mortality with neither resurrection nor redemption.” Still, he added, “I have not learned to accept death.” Here I offer a brief introduction to some of his ideas, with a defense of their viability and continuing vitality.

Derrida did not so much try to change the way we think, but rather worked to describe how we communicate. He observed that the notion of truth patterns language on multiple levels: while we generally assume some degree of truth to the words we use (or, we assume that words communicate the thing they are intended to represent), we also use words—through exchange, conversation and criticism—to achieve and arrive at truth. More often than not, though, two or more “truths” (or meanings) converge in the space of one text or discussion, creating a problem for the concept of reading an encompassing truth into the text. Derrida moved further with this critique of the way we interpret language, showing that opposed meanings exist within individual words. The effect of this, he argued, is that a text constantly does violence to itself by inscribing difference within its very terms.

At this point it might be easy to see why Derrida and his strategy for interpretation are often derided as nihilistic, self-defeating, or un-pragmatic among academics. Some say his works “miss the point” of literature. Others dismiss his points as self-evident, banal and clichÈ. I’d like to take this opportunity to defend his contribution by offering a different perspective.

I would argue that Derrida’s big point (with, of course, some reductiveness about what exactly that point is) is rather a subversion of nihilism, and in a more than strictly “textual” sense. One major effect of a deconstruction is its revelation that a text can produce an excess of meaning, which is impossible for any reader to contain in one act of speech or writing. As he explained it once, “The writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely.” Sure, along with this excess Derrida observed that absence is inherent to language (e.g. the absence we notice when someone or something stops talking or a paragraph ends). In his readings, though, Derrida consistently worked to present language’s excesses and absences as part of a non-hierarchical symbiosis.

There are many political questions that I’ve been avoiding in this defense. For example, bell hooks, in the essay “Postmodern Blackness,” argued that post-modern and post-structuralist theorists are mired in communal name-dropping amongst self-congratulatory academics who are mostly white men (like me). For her, the theories she alludes to have no liberatory potential for oppressed and suppressed peoples.

Though I agree that Derrida’s terms and models (‘deconstruction,’ ‘diffÈrance,’ ‘erasure,’ ‘supplement,’ ‘arche-writing,’ to name a few) will not likely be the planks upon which our ideal society is built, until then we can learn much through observing the paradoxical meanings created in speech and writing, both our own and others.’ Truth can be quite a downer these days. We often think or talk about “The truth of the matter,” and encounter contradictions, double meanings, simultaneity, postponements. It happens. The scary (or, perhaps, boring or sexy) thing is how destabilizing an act of language can be when it tries to name its own paradoxes (or to use a more fun Theory term, its aporias). When Derrida discussed the abyme or ‘abyss,’ he was alluding to what’s in-between those two meanings we are so darn sure of, and are probably right about.

Different pre-existing bodies of knowledge bring different interpretations to any text. Is that a truism we can agree on? Should I point to any pertinent debates where different interpretations put the issue of truth at loggerheads? OK: in some ongoing discussion I won’t name, one side is saying “the truth” is that Macalester must shore up its finances to enable the future pursuit of a range of ideals; another side argues that “the truth” is that Macalester is contradicting one of its ideals to (further) privilege the wealthy, and that our school’s financial security is not at issue. Here, I think it’s clear how much the notion of truth exists within broader structures of power, and competing assertions of truth exchange that power. Derrida turned his focus to these power structures, uncharacteristically without much elaboration, in his coining of the term ‘phallogocentrism.’ With that term, he linked the violence of masculinist power struggles with the Western tradition’s prioritization of truth. This term was later engaged and expanded upon by a range of theorists and critics, perhaps most famously by feminist, queer and gender theorist Judith Butler.

Some critics argue that Derrida was nihilistic (or a nonsensical waste of time) due to his incessant recognition of the self-defeatedness of his project. Ideas that effectively say “I'm never saying what I think I'm saying, nor what you think I'm saying, and I'm doing violence to the both of us by engaging in language, etc.” can become a pretty obnoxious and tiring refrain, and I’ve yet to even mention his preoccupation with renaming language under the umbrella of “writing.” His contribution, for me, is no less valid or broad in its influence. If you’re going to engage in a project of developing your interpretive skills, Jacques Derrida’s perspective will contribute to a bigger picture that can only be realized through the reading and comparison of more and more information. He will be missed. and, undoubtedly, re-read.