ABSTRACT
Faced with what seemed like the impossible task of preparing a short talk on Jacques Derrida’s legacy for the Tate Modern series, “Derrida’s Legacy”, I found myself indulging in the kind of delaying tactic everyone is familiar with: it suddenly seemed extremely important that I should count the books by Derrida on my shelves, both French originals and the English translations which, in many cases, stand next to them. There turned out to be one hundred and twenty-two. A few of the books are made up of interviews, two or three are co-authored and some are very short, but it remains a staggering number for one man to have written – all the more staggering when you consider the range of topics and authors treated. A look at the “By the same author” pages in one of his last Paris-published books tells the same story – around 70 books in French, as well as numerous other contributions to other people’s volumes. I can’t think of any philosopher or literary critic writing in English today whose life’s work is likely to come anywhere near this total.
