Here is the comprehensive guide to Derrida’s philosophy, with detailed explanations and examples for each question.
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### Level: Undergraduate (BS)
1. **Which 1967 text challenged the subordination of writing to speech?**
* **Answer: B**. *Of Grammatology*.
* **Explanation**: Derrida critiques "phonocentrism," the historical tendency to treat speech as the primary, authentic form of language.
* **Example**: Philosophers often claimed writing was merely a "dead" record of the "living" spoken voice.
2. **What does the term "Logocentrism" refer to?**
* **Answer: B**. The centering of philosophy on a foundational "presence."
* **Explanation**: It is the desire for an ultimate, stable anchor (Truth, God, Reason) that makes all other meanings possible.
* **Example**: Treating "Truth" as an absolute starting point that exists independently of language.
3. **What does *différance* mean in terms of linguistic function?**
* **Answer: A**. To differ and to defer.
* **Explanation**: Meaning is always distinct from other signs ("to differ") and is perpetually postponed in a chain of references ("to defer").
* **Example**: Looking up a word in a dictionary only leads you to other words, never a final, non-linguistic meaning.
4. **Why did Derrida replace the 'e' with an 'a' in *différance*?**
* **Answer: C**. To show the difference in writing which is silent in speech.
* **Explanation**: The 'a' is a silent intervention that disrupts the spoken word's illusion of "pure presence."
* **Example**: *Diffère* and *diffèra* sound identical when spoken, making the difference perceptible only on the page.
5. **What is a "trace" in Derridean thought?**
* **Answer: B**. The presence of the absent.
* **Explanation**: A word has meaning because it carries the "trace" of what it is *not*.
* **Example**: The word "day" only has meaning because it retains the shadow or "trace" of "night."
6. **The "supplement" implies that the original entity is:**
* **Answer: B**. Lacking.
* **Explanation**: Adding a supplement suggests the "complete" thing was actually incomplete.
* **Example**: If writing is a supplement to speech, it reveals that speech was never as self-sufficient as once claimed.
7. **Where was Derrida born?**
* **Answer: B**. Algeria.
* **Explanation**: His upbringing as a Sephardic Jew in colonial Algeria provided the lived experience of "the outsider."
* **Example**: Being expelled from school under Vichy quotas directly influenced his interest in institutional borders.
8. **"Aporia" refers to:**
* **Answer: A**. A logical paradox or impasse.
* **Explanation**: It is the moment a text contradicts its own foundations.
* **Example**: A law that prohibits all exceptions, yet must contain an exception to handle the prohibition of exceptions.
9. **What does "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" mean?**
* **Answer: C**. Reality is mediated by interpretive structures.
* **Explanation**: It argues that there is no "raw" reality we can access outside of our linguistic and cultural frames.
* **Example**: Our experience of "nature" is already shaped by the language we use to define it.
10. **The "Yale School" is associated with:**
* **Answer: B**. Literary Criticism.
* **Explanation**: A group of scholars (Paul de Man, etc.) who applied deconstruction to literary close-reading.
* **Example**: Analyzing how a poem systematically dismantles its own thematic claims.
11. **Derrida's *Annus Mirabilis* refers to:**
* **Answer: B**. 1967.
* **Explanation**: The landmark year he published three foundational texts that changed philosophy.
* **Example**: The simultaneous release of *Of Grammatology*, *Writing and Difference*, and *Speech and Phenomena*.
12. **What is "Phonocentrism"?**
* **Answer: B**. The privileging of speech over writing.
* **Explanation**: The false belief that the voice is more "natural" and authentic than the "artificial" written word.
* **Example**: Valuing a person’s spoken testimony as "the truth" while dismissing their written statement as "secondary."
13. **Derrida’s lecture at Johns Hopkins in 1966 marked:**
* **Answer: A**. The end of Structuralism.
* **Explanation**: He challenged the "center" of structural systems, launching Post-Structuralism.
* **Example**: Critiquing the idea that any system (like a society or language) has a fixed, unmoving hub.
14. **What is the primary function of "play" in Derridean discourse?**
* **Answer: B**. Disruption of the fixed center.
* **Explanation**: Recognizing that meanings are open-ended and constantly shifting.
* **Example**: Encouraging multiple, conflicting interpretations of a text rather than seeking one "correct" reading.
15. **Who was a key influence on Derrida at the ENS?**
* **Answer: A**. Georges Canguilhem.
* **Explanation**: A renowned historian and philosopher of science who influenced Derrida’s rigorous approach.
* **Example**: His work helped Derrida understand how scientific concepts are historically constructed.
16. **Why did Plato reject writing in the *Phaedrus*?**
* **Answer: B**. It would cause forgetfulness.
* **Explanation**: Plato argued that reliance on external "marks" (writing) ruins internal wisdom.
* **Example**: Being unable to recall a speech because one has it written on a scroll in their pocket.
17. **A "Pharmakon" is:**
* **Answer: A**. Both poison and cure.
* **Explanation**: An undecidable term that holds two opposite meanings at once.
* **Example**: A medicine that heals the body but, in high doses, acts as a deadly poison.
18. **"Presence" in Western metaphysics is seen as:**
* **Answer: C**. An illusion.
* **Explanation**: Derrida argues that the idea of an "immediate" self-evident truth is an effect of language.
* **Example**: The feeling that "I am here" (in my mind) is always mediated by the concepts of "me" and "here."
19. **Deconstruction is often mistaken for:**
* **Answer: B**. Destruction or nihilism.
* **Explanation**: It is actually a careful, rigorous mode of analyzing how meaning is built, not a way to destroy it.
* **Example**: Pointing out the instability of a foundation is not the same as burning the house down.
20. **The "Ethical Turn" occurred:**
* **Answer: A**. In the late 1980s.
* **Explanation**: Derrida moved from analyzing language structures to applying them to justice, law, and politics.
* **Example**: Transitioning from literary theory to writing extensively about international human rights.
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### Level: Masters (MS)
21. **How does Derrida define the difference between Law and Justice?**
* **Answer: B**. Law is calculable; Justice is incalculable.
* **Explanation**: Law is a set of rules (constructible), while justice is an infinite, impossible responsibility to the "Other."
* **Example**: You can follow the law (calculate), but you can never "calculate" the perfect ethical action for a stranger.
22. **What is "Hauntology"?**
* **Answer: B**. A term from *Specters of Marx* regarding the "presence" of the absent.
* **Explanation**: The idea that the future and present are always haunted by the ghosts of the past.
* **Example**: Even if a political movement fails, its ideas "haunt" the present and force us to deal with them.
23. **What is the central problem in the debate with John Searle?**
* **Answer: B**. The importance of authorial intent.
* **Explanation**: Searle thought meaning came from the speaker's serious intention; Derrida said signs function regardless of intent.
* **Example**: If a person quotes a promise in a play, the words still have meaning, even if the actor doesn't "intend" to keep it.
24. **"Iterability" means:**
* **Answer: B**. A sign can be quoted and function in a new context.
* **Explanation**: Language can be cut off from its original speaker and still retain meaning.
* **Example**: Reading a grocery list written by a stranger—the list has meaning even though you don't know who wrote it.
25. **Why was Foucault critical of Derrida?**
* **Answer: B**. He accused him of a "textual" reductionism.
* **Explanation**: Foucault thought Derrida turned everything into a "text," ignoring real-world power/historical materialities.
* **Example**: Foucault believed madness was a social power struggle, not just a linguistic concept to be deconstructed.
26. **What is "sous rature" (under erasure)?**
* **Answer: A**. Crossing out a word to show it is inadequate yet necessary.
* **Explanation**: Using a word while acknowledging it doesn't fully capture what you mean.
* **Example**: Writing ~~Being~~ to show the concept is flawed but you need to use it to talk about existence.
27. **What is the paradox of hospitality?**
* **Answer: B**. It requires both an open door and a closed border.
* **Explanation**: To be a "host," you must own the space (control/rules), but real hospitality is unconditional.
* **Example**: You welcome a stranger, but you also implicitly tell them they cannot rearrange your furniture.
28. **Why is the "pure gift" impossible?**
* **Answer: B**. The moment it is recognized as a gift, it enters an economic cycle.
* **Explanation**: As soon as you say "thank you" or "I am generous," you are in a cycle of debt and return.
* **Example**: If you give a gift expecting a "thank you," you have technically just traded, not given.
29. **What does the "center" of a structure represent?**
* **Answer: B**. A point of absolute stability.
* **Explanation**: The "center" is meant to control the system (like God in religion or Truth in science).
* **Example**: In a solar system model, the sun is the "center" that regulates the orbits of all planets.
30. **What is the relation between "Deconstruction" and "Justice"?**
* **Answer: B**. "Deconstruction is justice."
* **Explanation**: Because justice cannot be fixed or calculated by rules, deconstruction is the process of seeking it.
* **Example**: Continually questioning the law to ensure it is serving actual justice, rather than just blind obedience.
31. **In *Of Grammatology*, what is the "Science of Writing"?**
* **Answer: B**. Grammatology.
* **Explanation**: A project to study how "marks" and "traces" constitute human experience.
* **Example**: Studying how written scripts throughout history have been treated as "inferior" to the voice.
32. **Who was the translator largely responsible for Derrida’s fame in the US?**
* **Answer: B**. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
* **Explanation**: Her introduction to the English translation was a masterclass in explaining complex ideas.
* **Example**: Her work bridged the gap between French philosophy and American academic circles.
33. **What was the primary argument of the 1992 Cambridge protestors?**
* **Answer: B**. He lacked rigorous philosophical standards.
* **Explanation**: Analytical philosophers saw his work as "rhetorical play" rather than "real" logic.
* **Example**: Calling his work "intellectual hocus-pocus" because it didn't use mathematical logic.
34. **How does Derrida view the "Cogito" (Descartes)?**
* **Answer: B**. As a product of specific metaphysical assumptions.
* **Explanation**: He critiques the idea that the "I think" is a self-evident, immediate point of truth.
* **Example**: Pointing out that "I" is already a linguistic construct before I start thinking.
35. **What role does "marginalization" play in his life and work?**
* **Answer: B**. It informs his focus on borders and outsiders.
* **Explanation**: His experience with anti-Semitic exclusion made him skeptical of systems that exclude the "Other."
* **Example**: Always asking who or what a theory is trying to leave out to stay "stable."
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### Level: PhD
36. **How does *différance* challenge the Saussurean concept of the sign?**
* **Answer: B**. It posits that the "signified" is also a signifier in a chain.
* **Explanation**: Meaning never stops at a "thing"; it just goes to another sign.
* **Example**: "Tree" refers to the concept of a tree, which is defined by "plant," which is defined by "organic," and so on.
37. **What is the "rupture" in the history of structuralism?**
* **Answer: B**. The recognition that the center cannot hold.
* **Explanation**: Realizing that systems don't have a natural, fixed center—it’s always a constructed illusion.
* **Example**: Lévi-Strauss discovering that his "structural" truths about culture depended on his own Western biases.
38. **In *Plato's Pharmacy*, why does the "pharmakon" collapse?**
* **Answer: B**. Because the text requires the concept to define itself, blurring boundaries.
* **Explanation**: Plato needs the *pharmakon* to define "bad" writing, but he uses the same word to define "good" healing.
* **Example**: The binary (Good/Bad) breaks down because the same word occupies both sides.
39. **What does the "Specter" in *Hauntology* represent?**
* **Answer: B**. The return of repressed socio-political possibilities.
* **Explanation**: Things from the past that were dismissed (like Marx's critiques) return to disturb the present status quo.
* **Example**: Seeing "zombie" economic ideas that modern capitalism thought it had killed off long ago.
40. **How does "iterability" undermine "context"?**
* **Answer: B**. By showing that meaning can survive the loss of its original context.
* **Explanation**: If a sign can be repeated elsewhere, the "original context" is not required for it to function.
* **Example**: A sentence written on a wall 100 years ago still carries meaning today, regardless of why it was originally painted.
41. **What is the relationship between the "Gift" and the "Economy"?**
* **Answer: B**. The gift is the impossible limit of the economy.
* **Explanation**: A "true" gift would exit the economy, but the moment it happens, it's back in the economy.
* **Example**: Trying to give someone a gift so secretly that they never know you gave it—only then is it a "pure" gift.
42. **Why is the "Ethical Turn" not a departure from the earlier work?**
* **Answer: B**. It is a radicalization of the "other" already present in the trace.
* **Explanation**: The logic of the "trace" (the other *within* the self) is the logical foundation for radical hospitality and justice.
* **Example**: If I am "not myself" (because of the trace), I must be hospitable to the "other" within me.
43. **"Institutional pushback" against Derrida reflects:**
* **Answer: A**. The threat to binary, foundational logic in Western thought.
* **Explanation**: His work wasn't just "hard to read"; it threatened the very foundation of how institutions define "Truth."
* **Example**: Departments of Philosophy felt their entire canon was being challenged as "metaphysical constructs."
44. **What is the "trace" in relation to the "other"?**
* **Answer: B**. The trace is the way the other is always "within" the self.
* **Explanation**: We are made of what we are *not*; therefore, the "Other" is part of our own constitution.
* **Example**: You don't have an identity without the "trace" of the strangers and cultures you interact with.
45. **What does the "death of the author" (Barthes/Derrida) imply for the reader?**
* **Answer: B**. The reader becomes a co-producer of the text's meanings.
* **Explanation**: Since meaning isn't fixed in the author's mind, the reader "activates" the text.
* **Example**: A novel written in 1920 can mean something new and relevant to a reader in 2026.
46. **What is the significance of the "Egyptian god Theuth" in Derrida's analysis?**
* **Answer: B**. He represents the origin of the "poison" of writing.
* **Explanation**: In the myth, Theuth gives writing to the King, who rejects it as a "poison."
* **Example**: Using this myth to show how Western culture has historically "blamed" writing for being artificial.
47. **How does Derrida interpret the "history" of madness in Foucault?**
* **Answer: B**. As a history that relies on the language of reason to describe what is outside of reason.
* **Explanation**: You cannot use "logic" (the master) to describe "madness" (the other) without domesticating it.
* **Example**: Trying to write a book about "silence" that is just hundreds of pages of noise.
48. **In *Limited Inc*, what is the target?**
* **Answer: B**. Searle’s rigid interpretative claims.
* **Explanation**: Derrida attacks the idea that a "context" can be closed off or fully controlled.
* **Example**: Arguing that Searle’s rules for speech are just another "metaphysical" fantasy.
49. **What does "inconstructibility" mean in his theory of Justice?**
* **Answer: B**. It is not a construct but an experience.
* **Explanation**: Justice is an "event" or a "horizon"—you can't build it like a bridge.
* **Example**: It is the "feeling" of injustice that drives us to act, not a blueprint.
50. **Deconstruction is best described as:**
* **Answer: B**. A way of reading that opens text to its own instability.
* **Explanation**: It is an active engagement with the text to show how it works.
* **Example**: Reading a constitution not as a static law, but as a living set of promises that always needs to be re-read.
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