Introduction

Abstract

The death of Jacques Derrida in October 2004 leaves behind an immense corpus of work, interviews, essays, films, TV documentaries, almost eighty books, as well as literally thousands of critical studies spanning many disciplines, languages and intellectual contexts. What is the legacy of Jacques Derrida? What will ‘live on’ and ‘survive‘? ‘Live on’ and ‘survive’ are of course two of Derrida’s own phrases, and it is remarkable how Derrida’s thoughts on the theme of translation, interpretation, the proper name, biodegradability and the signature, to name but a few of his concerns, illuminate the reception history and intellectual legacy of his own work. In an essay on Hamlet, Derrida provides an answer to our question, via one of his frequent meditations on death: ‘one must stop believing that the dead are just departed and that the departed do nothing. One must stop pretending to know what is meant by “to die” and especially by “dying.” One has, then, to talk about spectrality’ (TOJ, 30). By spectrality Derrida means the rethinking of presence and absence that characterizes much of his work. Spectrality, haunting, differance, the trace, the supplement, these and the many similar terms we find articulated in Derrida’s rigorous deconstructive readings, all function to respect singularity, and to consider the remains of an intellectual legacy.