The politics of the proper name

Nietzsche, Derrida and De Man disfigured

pp. 122-148

in: Michael Thomas, The reception of Derrida, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

The year 1987 saw a renewed interest in the politics of deconstruction. The discovery of a number of book and music reviews written by the young Paul de Man between 1939 and 1943 for Jeudi: Hebdomadaire du Cercle "Le Libre-Examen", Les Cahiers du Libre Examen, Bibliographie Dechenne, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir and the Flemish newspaper Het Vlaamsche Land prompted newspaper reports of deconstruction's culpability with antisemitism and the politics of the far right. The discovery of the articles by a young Belgian researcher, Ortwin de Graef, led to a violent and acrimonious debate that instantly became a major media event far beyond academia. De Man's silence about his wartime articles was seen to confirm the conclusions that were being drawn from the literary translation of Derrida's work.