Chapter 1 - Inheriting Derrida

Summary

To begin to read or write a book such as this one is to acknowledge that we are heirs of Jacques Derrida. We are heirs: this is the way that Derrida himself puts it in Specters of Marx, emphasizing the verb are in order to make the point that to be is to inherit, “that the being of what we are is first of all inheritance, whether we like it or know it or not” (SM 54). What does this mean? In Derrida's sense of the word, inheritance is not about receiving something and having it in our possession to use as we see fit. Inheritance is never “a given,” he says. It comes to us as “a task” (SM 54). It comes as an injunction to which we must respond. This is the way that Derrida thought of “deconstruction,” not as a tool (that we can take from him and use to do this or that with texts), but as a response, a way of responding, of saying “yes” to the tradition of which he and we are heirs.

We will take this, Derrida's own understanding of inheritance, as our point of departure in this book. The book attempts to introduce Jacques Derrida to students of his work, approaching this work on its own terms, as a mode of responding affirmatively to the Western philosophical and religious tradition.