Introducing Derrida: A Graphic Guide

Introducing Graphic Guides

by Jeff Collins, Bill Mayblin (Illustrator)

Brilliant illustrated guide to the best-known and most controversial continental philosopher of the latter 20th century. Jacques Derrida is the most famous philosopher of the late 20th century. Yet Derrida has undermined the rules of philosophy, rejected its methods, broken its procedures and contaminated it with literary styles of writing. Derrida's philosophy is a puzzling array of oblique, deviant and yet rigorous tactics for destabilizing texts, meanings and identities. 'Deconstruction', as these strategies have been called, is reviled and celebrated in equal measure. Introducing Derrida introduces and explains his work, taking us on an intellectual adventure that disturbs some of our most comfortable habits of thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biography, Theory, Graphic Novels, Literary Criticism, History

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 10, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derrida may be brilliant, however, his writing is incomprehensible. This book helped me understand what the hell he was talking about. Now I get to throw Deconstruction around like a ridiculously good hand of poker.

[Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting introduction, easy to read, and with enough complexity to get you thinking.

[Hasan Abbasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

سری اینترودیوسینگ سری کتاب هایی شبیه سری دامیز هست . فرم روایتی کتاب جالب و سادست ولی خب برگردان فارسیش به نظرم فرم نسخه ارجینال رو کامل حفظ نکرده که طبیعیه . کتاب به شکلی تصویری به دنبال توضیح تفکرات دریداست . مفاهیمی مانند متافیزیک ، حضور، دیفرانس و ... به سادگی توضیح داده شده . در برگردان فارسی با عنوان دریدا قدم اول چاپ شده و همونطور که از نام برمیاد قدم اول برای اشنایی با دریداست .

[Walter Michalski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This stuff is crazy complex but the book tried its hardest, I kind of got the gist. Very palatable

[Castles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t quite understand a bit, but hey, it’s Derrida... you wouldn’t expect to understand him from one book.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bir düşünürü sevmemek, onu bilmemek için geçerli bir neden değil.
Ama sevgisizliğin sosyal bilimcide büyük bir isteksizlik yarattığı da kesin.

"Çizgilerle Derrida" kitabını okurken aklımda bu vardı. Kitap türünün benzer örneklerinin aksine, şaşırtıcı bir derinlik içeriyor. En azından biraz felsefi metafizik, yapısalcılık ve fenomenolojiye aşina olunsa, kitapta anlatıldığı kadarıyla Derrida'nın fikirlerine vakıf olmak kolaylaşır.

Kitap Derrida'nın üç temel katkısı olarak gördüğü şeye odaklanmış:

1. Düşünürün Batı felsefesine hakim olan ikili karşıtlıkları eleştirerek, "karar verilemez" olana yaptığı vurguyu açığa çıkarması. "Öz aramaktan vaz geçin, sınırlar değişken ve geçişkendir. Örneğin, felsefe ve edebiyat arasındaki fark, özsel değil yapaydır ve toplumsal olarak yaratılır."

2. Dili, anlamı ve daha bir çok şeyi mümkün kılan unsur ikili karşıtlıklar değil farktır: "Bir kelimenin anlamı, aynı zamanda taşımadığı anlamlarla birlikte anlaşılabilir. Bir sistemin unsurları, yokluklarıyla da diğer unsurları belirler."

3. Felsefe tarihi düşünürlerinin, bu bilgiler ışığında içkin eleştiri yoluyla yıkılıp yeniden yapılması: Yapısöküm. "Felsefe tarihi metafizik düşüncelerle doludur. Ancak bu tarihin en büyük isimleri, aynı zamanda kendi metafizik çıkarımlarının altını oyan düşünceler de geliştirmişlerdir."

Bir günde okunabilecek, en azından aklınızda "yahu bu adamın derdi nedir?" diye sorular dolanıyorsa, kabaca bir fikir edinebileceğiniz başarılı bir kitap.

Ha, Derrida'yı sevmemi sağladı mı? Hayır.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I started this book without having read any of Derrida's works, only a vague sense of what "deconstruction" was. Even without that background, I feel like I now have a good sense of the context and key ideas of Derrida's decades of work, and how it crosses (and blurs) the boundaries of philosophy, literature, architecture and many other fields and movements. The summaries are well written, the graphics reflect the ideas, and the thorough bibliography gives many options for exploring some of his individual ideas in their original works. My only complaint with the book is that it could be more reflective of genuine criticisms or analyses of his works; even the graphics portray his critics as faceless, monolithic structures, rather than acknowledging that there are genuine critical responses to his challenging ideas.

[Griffin Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most excellent and concise exposition of this difficult thinker's main contributions and enquiries.

I've read a couple smaller works of Derrida, but I am hoping to go back and read some Husserl and de Saussure along with a bit more Heidegger before tackling M Derrida's main works (i.e. it'll be a while).

[guilhereme silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understood about fifty percent of this book (which is 40 percent more than I thought I would). It was actually very helpful.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a disclaimer, I have no direct experience with Derrida’s work.  I started my journey in critical theory by reading Introducing Critical Theory, which I found offers a useful overview of the subject but which is, perhaps necessarily, very general.  To help fill in some of the gaps, I decided to continue on to some specific theorists, starting with Derrida.  So my review of this book is purely of this book and how clearly and engagingly it seems to convey the complex, sometimes seemingly contradictory, school of deconstruction.  Whether it interprets Derrida “correctly,” I cannot accurately judge without reading his works myself.

Introducing Derrida, from a novice’s perspective, is a very approachable guide to deconstruction.  I went into the book really knowing nothing about the topic (besides the fact that people seem to equate it with tearing things apart) and came out feeling as though I could talk knowledgably about the general concepts and approaches of the theory.  The book highlights key terms and gives brief definitions and examples, providing a more than adequate overview of not only deconstruction itself, but also its historical reception and its political implications.

I do have some confusion, but I believe my issues are with deconstruction itself, and not necessarily with this book.  In many cases, deconstruction does not make sense to me.  The book is written clearly enough that I understand the explanations…but I fail to see the point of deconstruction.  I see that one can, for instance, show the “undecidability” of terms, but I have yet to understand exactly why one would want to, why deconstructive approaches are actually useful.

For example, the book explains that a deconstructive approach to architecture would theoretically result in a building that is ugly and functionless—but then hastily reassures the readers that this would not be quite the case, because perhaps beauty and function can be redefined—but then notes that no one has ever really solved this problem or built such a building.  First, this summary is contradictory.  Is the building useless or not?  Second, it fails to adequately convey why someone would want to build a maybe-useless building, besides as some type of protest or artistic statement.

In comparison with Introducing Critical Theory, the graphics in Introducing Derrida are notably less clever and less useful as mnemonic devices.  An inordinate percent of the illustrations are simply of Derrida himself, with speech bubbles quoting some of his works directly.  Many of the other remaining illustrations are of other theorists and philosophers, with their own speech bubbles.  So there is really no overwhelming benefit to the book’s being a “graphic guide” as opposed to having been primarily text-based—unless one simply enjoys pictures breaking up what can otherwise be a dense topic.

However, the Derrida pictures occasionally complicate the message of the book.  As in Introducing Critical Theory, the lines between instances where the authors are summarizing Derrida (or other scholars) and when they are adding their own personal commentary on deconstruction are vague.  The fact that there are so many mini Derridas with speech bubble quotes tempts the reader to suspect that anything not in a speech bubble must be authorial commentary…but it is impossible to be certain.

So, I still have a lot of work to do understanding Derrida and deconstruction, but I feel as if this book has given me a solid foundation from which to start.  Derrida is notoriously complicated (the word “incomprehensible” may have been thrown around as well), so I believe having a general overview of his primarily ideas will be essential in attempting to tackle his primary texts.  And after that I should be able to move on to figuring out how other scholars have used deconstruction.

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

“My aim is not to justify the invention of this word but to intensify its play. Everything is strategic, and adventurous. For these reasons, there is nowhere to begin.”

This was Derrida talking about the concept Differance. I have heard of Derrida, but have never read his work before, which is why I picked this up in the first place. I always enjoy learning about new philosophers and I was intrigued by what this book had to say. The overall consensus about Derrida appears to be is that he is pretty tricky to pin down, and that many people have many opposing views about him and his work.

We learn that back in 1992 that four senior members of the University of Cambridge voted against giving Derrida an honorary degree. Apparently no candidate had been opposed for 29 years, such was the strength of feeling regarding the quality of the man’s work at the elite level of academia in England at the time.

Known primarily for his own brand of deconstruction, we learn about his ideas like Differance, Logocentrism and Phenomenology v Structuralism and many other concepts he developed and challenged throughout his fairly controversial and colourful career in Europe and the States.

Much of this passed me by and I would be lying if I said I came away with a clear and informed understanding of the man and his work. But if you cannot clearly describe or translate your concepts or ideas clearly to a meaningful amount of people, then how valid or relevant or important can it really be?...There surely comes a point where you are in serious danger of disappearing up your own rectum in a cloud of meaningless ambiguities.

It’s incredibly easy to hide worn clichés and meaningless drivel under the guise of philosophy. There are plenty of people out there getting away with it today. I am not saying Derrida is guilty of drivel, but I cannot see enough clear, unique thinking or strongly developed theories to justify his reputation, but then I am only going from what I have read in here, maybe I have missed something. In fact I know I have missed much.

When you approach language in the way that Derrida does you are in serious danger of becoming Orwellian in the shape shifting of meaning. By making your work so vague and shapeless that it cannot be examined, challenged or enjoyed then you have to wonder what the point is?...This was an interesting enough introduction, the art work does a decent enough job, though I am not sure it made me want to read any of his work any time soon.

I think one of his English translators, Gayatri Spivak, summed it up best when she said, “I have very little patience with people who are so deeply into deconstruction that they have nothing else substantive to think about.”

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was recommended to me by a friend when I was complaining about my inability to get into Of Grammatology, despite several efforts. I was impressed--for an introduction, it's surprisingly complex. The first half, which attempts to explain Derrida's basic concepts in terms of his place within philosophy, is considerably better than the second half, when the authors try to speed through his application to various fields, including literature, visual arts, architecture, and politics. But that was actually the foundation that I needed most, since I've managed to pick up his applications fairly well from other sources. At the very least, it inspired me to take a stab at the primary texts again.

[Massimiliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 star
The issue with these introductory guides is that they cannot avoid to convey some very complex concept in very few words, leaving you with more questions that answers, before moving on. Derrida's approach (philosophy, we can call it, but I would say it is more than that) has many facets and some of those are exposed very quickly here...I fear I missed something about his critics on Structuralism for instance, as well as about his work on Joyce.
I will move on to some of the tests suggested at the end of the book to proceed with the study of Deconstruction.

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent introduction to Derrida's philosophy, if it may be called that. Derrida is obscure and this book is not, so it is difficult to judge if it does right by him. Derrida would want us to deconstruct the motives behind the book, not analyze his work. In that sense, the book is a failure, but because some of us think that Derrida needs an interpreter for his BS, I'd rather read it for this book content.

[James G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This précis was a good read, and helped my thinking around Derrida who I have read a decent amount of, but outside of any academic context that might have framed his thinking more broadly for my benefit. This work did not really do that but I enjoyed a few of the anecdotes it draws out, like Derrida's interpretation of the story of Pharmakon and the development of park outside Paris with Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.

[Kristoporus Primeloka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satu hal yang kurang ketika kuliah arsitektur dulu adalah asik menggunakan istilah dekonstruksi tanpa mengenal seluk beluk pemikiran Derrida, juga persinggungannya dengan fenomenologi , semiologi, dan strukturalisme bahasa, sehingga yang sering terjadi adalah gubahan-gubahan arsitektural yang sesuka hati, bukan pertanyaan-pertanyaan interogatif menantang kelembaman hegemoni yang ada - bahwa arsitektur harus memenuhi kaidah : kekuatan, estetika, atau kegunaan ,dst.

[Earline · Rating 4 out of 5]

After watching the Derrida documentary and becoming increasingly fascinated with him, I came across this book in the library. This book is helpful but also seemed to raise more questions than answers as to what exactly is Derrida about. Overall a good but intense introduction that has inspired me to look further into his writings.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had had this book in my literary theory class a few years ago. It was the most concise explanation of Derrida that I have read. The pictures definitely help. My only complaint is superficial. The pages in my copy are in black and white and it's hard to read the writing on some of the pages, since it's black typeface set on a dark gray background.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good - does a solid job of drawing out some key arguments and contextualising them. There's lots of illustrations, which makes it feel like you're reading the most high-brow children's book imaginable.

My understanding of Derrida has improved from 'very hazy' to 'still pretty hazy but I kind of get some of what he was saying'.

[Brent Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

PResented like a graphic novel, it's a fun introduction to Derrida's main precepts. I have cited it in papers - particularly the notion of opposing binaries, which Derrida got from the structuralists.

[Clare Low · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a great help in giving an (highly condensed and distilled) overview of Derrida, but it definitely does not replace reading his works in original form. It's a little ironic that I felt like I actually understood deconstruction after reading this book!

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does what it sets out to do. An excellent introduction to Derrida. While this is at times difficult to get to grips with, this is more down to the notorious difficulty of Derrida's work and way of thinking, and so still serves as a good simplification of the real thing.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't had much success in reading Derrida himself, although I was more or less familiar with his ideas. This guide help clarify my thinking and left me more confident I understand his main concepts.

[Keith F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and surprisingly difficult for an "Introducing..." book.

[Charles Vogel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deconstruction for beginners, Derrida in comic book form, at least this is a good way to bring substance to a daunting set of beliefs. After this read, you really want to tackle Derrida first hand.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is helped me see Derrida through broad strokes.

[Artemis33 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of a complicated linguistic cultural philosophy

[Mrityunjay Mrityunjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nutshell Introduction to Derrida. Illustrations help chewing better in a comical way. Warning: Reading this one could lead you to many others.

[graceofgod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. Kind of haphazard tho.

[Andrew Tang · Rating 1 out of 5]

I learnt what Derrida did, but I still have no clue how he did (deconstruction). It did nothing to assist in reading his impregnable writing :/