Level: Undergraduate (BS)
1. Which 1967 text challenged the subordination of writing to speech?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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:
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?
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:
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?
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:
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:
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"?
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:
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?
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?
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?
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:
.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:
An illusion.
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:
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:
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.
Level: Masters (MS)
21. How does Derrida define the difference between Law and Justice?
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"?
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?
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:
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?
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)?
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?
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?
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?
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"?
"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"?
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?
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?
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?
He represents the origin of the "poison" of writing.
Explanatio: 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?
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?
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?
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:
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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