The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
Jacques DerridaRead
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the disconnection between personal identity and the roles individuals play within societal expectations.
Jacques Derrida expresses his struggle to identify with the intellectuals who conform to societal and political scripts. He questions the authenticity of these roles and emphasizes the importance of critically examining the inherited beliefs that shape our understanding of self and society. This quote invites deeper reflection on the nature of identity, authenticity, and the social constructs that influence our lives.
Themes
IdentityPhilosophySocietyPoliticsSelfAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing the impact of societal roles on personal identity in a philosophy class.
More from Jacques Derrida
All quotes →Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
Jacques DerridaRead
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
Jacques DerridaRead
Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.
Jacques DerridaRead
The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
Jacques DerridaRead
Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
Jacques DerridaRead
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