Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a young Jewish saint

"Who can say "I am Jewish?" What does "Jew" mean? In Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, Helene Cixous explores what these questions mean for the influential philosopher Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstruction, scoffer at fixed identities, and explorer of the indeterminate. Cixous's kaleidoscopic portrait effortlessly merges biography, textual commentary, and discussions of Jewish rituals and past philosophers in a playful exploration of Derrida, his works, and being (or not being) Jewish." "Derrida, who died in 2004, and Cixous were lifelong friends and grew up as French Jews in Algeria. They shared a "belonging constituted of exclusion and nonbelonging"--Not Algerian, rejected by France, their Jewishness concealed or acculturated. In Derrida's family, "one never said 'circumcision' but 'baptism, ' not 'Bar Mitzvah' but 'communion.'" Judaism cloaked in Catholicism is one example of the undecidability of identity that influenced the thinker whom Cixous calls a "Jewish Saint.""--Jacket.  Read more...