...according to more than 1,000 professors of English, comparative literature, foreign languages, and drama, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the same fields--plus a handful of faculty who teach in philosophy departments. They are protesting the New York Times obituary, which did convey, accurately, the fact that Derrida was widely thought to be an intellectual fraud.
Not a single philosopher of any note in the English-speaking world--or from Europe--is represented on the list of signatories to the letter, by the way. There is a reason.
May I suggest as an epitaph for Derrida the following apt remark of Nietzsche's?
"Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity" (The Gay Science, sec. 173).
(Thanks to Craig Duncan for the pointer to the letter.)
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