ABSTRACT
It would be impossible to summarize Derrida’s work to date, even if we were to limit ourselves to his most influential contributions to philosophy, religion, linguistics, literary theory, and cultural studies. Yet there is a certain orientation that is consistent throughout his many texts. We might describe it as a kind of close reading that raises questions about “what is implicit in the accumulated reserve” (“An Interview with Derrrida,” p. 108). Through relentlessly vigilant attention to the texts and discourses in which the fundamentals of Western thought are articulated, he works to reveal the uncertainties, instabilities, and impasses implicit in our intellectual traditions, moving us to the edges of knowing, at which point “what once seemed assured is now revealed in its precariousness” (“An Interview with Derrrida,” p. 110). This is not, as his critics allege, out of some nihilistic contempt for all things Western or masturbatory fascination with groundless intellectual free play, but in order to destabilize assumptions enough to open spaces for continued reflection and the possibility of innovation and creative thinking. He treats Western intellectual tradition as a living discourse and works to keep our intellectual disciplines and educational institutions from ossifying.
