francesco said:Need a 'primer' on Derrida books, what to read first, and what is considered essential by him or about him.
Thanks for help.
personally i find all this primer stuff a waste of time. if you are serious about understanding JD, and i don't think you should bother unless you really want to know, then read the originals.
henrymiller said:jesus, why? there are *lots* of important thinkers out there, y'know. it might be useful to know about derrida as 'context' for other things. only someone with infinite leisure time could plausibly study all of derrida if this was their aim. and then do fans of derrida know all the texts derrida refers to in the depth he does? should they? even if they should, they couldn't.
Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it's worth mentioning that your French has to be very good indeed in order to really get to grips with the detail of Derrida's work. His writing is so nuanced that it can be very hard to work out what's really going on. I'm competent enough to read most French philosophy without much of a problem, but I have a great deal of difficulty with Derrida.jadrenos said:Without wishing to sound pretentious, I find Derrida much clearer in French, rather than in translation, so if you can read French at all you might want to get the French editions of the books.