Skip to content

In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted-and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book-to write a history of madness itself. Itself. Of madness itself. That is by letting madness speak for itself.

— Jacques Derrida Writing and Difference (1978)

Another quote →

More quotes by Jacques Derrida

I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.

Circumcision, that’s all I’ve ever talked about.

The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.

Writing and Difference (1978)

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.

All Jacques Derrida quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jacques Derrida (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.