Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was unquestionably one of the most celebrated and reviled French thinkers of the last thirty years. Outside France, his influence in comparative literature circles, through deconstruction and other ideas, has been so profound that his personal role as a leader of contemporary French philosophy has been almost overlooked. Perhaps because there is no equivalent in English-speaking countries to the timetabling of philosophy in the French education system, writers on Derrida outside France have not fully appreciated the importance of this political and cultural...