Wednesday, October 13, 2004
What's up with everybody dying lately? Do famous people have some sort of inborn obsolescence requiring them to all croak at once? Yeah, I just said obsolescence. Try to cope. I always feel vaguely guilty when people I've heard of die, as though I should have made better use of them during their lifetimes. Jacques Derrida is one of these — I'd heard his name, I'd heard of deconstructionism, but that's the extent of my knowledge. I was talking to Luke on AIM when he heard the news over the radio and said, in his particularly Lukeish way, "Shit! Derrida is essential." He told me what pancreas is in Russian, some polysyllabic nightmare I've since forgotten (Mssr. Derrida died of pancreatic cancer, and Luke is currently in Moscow, so there you go). Anyway, in an effort to educate you, the masses, I offer a link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1325283,00.html. Go read what some "experts" have to say.
Some are undoubtedly jacqued at his passing; others were probably happy to get derrida him, no matter what they say out loud.
