The young Derrida and French philosophy, 1945-1968

"In this powerful new study Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reading Derrida from a historical perspective and drawing on new archival sources, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy shows how Derrida's thought arose in the closely contested space of post-war French intellectual life, developing in response to Sartrian existentialism, religious philosophy and the structuralism that found its base at the École Normale Supe;rieure. In a history of the philosophical movements and academic institutions of post-war France, Baring paints a portrait of a community caught between humanism and anti-humanism, providing a radically new interpretation of the genesis of deconstruction and of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times"-- "The intellectual history of postwar France often resembles village life. Most of the important academic institutions - the Sorbonne, the Ecole Normale Supeþrieure, the College de France, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, even the cafes where Sartre debated with Camus - sit within the same square mile on the left bank of the Seine. This "village" was not only geographically limited. Names recur with surprising regularity: Bachelard, father and daughter, two Merleau-Pontys, as well as numerous Jolys, Lautmans, Pons and Michauds filling up the promotions at the elite centers for higher learning. The founder of Tel Quel, Philippe Sollers, married the philosopher Julia Kristeva; Jacques Lacan married Georges Bataille's widow; his daughter married the Lacanian Jacques-Alain Miller. Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Serres, and Jacques Derrida were schoolfriends before they were philosophical interlocutors and then rivals"--