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Who was Jacques Derrida? For some, he is responsible, at least in part, for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to 'little more than an object of ridicule'. For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event Perhaps, Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times. Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, this biography will introduce to a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.
About the author
Peter Salmon was born in Australia but now lives in the UK. his first novel,
The Coffee Story (Sceptre, 2011), was a
New Statesman Book of the Year. He has written for the
Guardian, the
Sydney Review of Books, the
New Humanist, as well as Australian TV and radio. He has received Writer’s Awards from the Arts Council of England and the Arts Council of Victoria, Australia. Formerly Centre Director of the John Osborne/The Hurst Arvon Centre (2006-2012), he also teaches creative writing, most recently at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Liverpool John Moores University.
Report
This is a compulsively readable intellectual biography of Derrida that teases out his endlessly fascinating thought, even when it is at its knottiest, with admirable patience and lucidity. Salmon's book, in vividly transmitting the intellectual excitement of Derrida's times, reminds the reader that, especially in his thinking about ethics, he remains a philosopher who is urgently, politically relevant to our times too. Matthew Beaumont, Professor at English at University College, London
