Born in Algeria, Jacques Derrida became interested in philosophy through reading Sartre. In 1949, he went to the École Normale Supérieure, where he became interested in Husserl and, later, structuralism and the work of Foucault. His thesis and first book was on
Husserl's geometry (1962). In 1967, Derrida published three major works: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena. These form the basis for a subsequent huge output. He has written over 40 books, which include Dissemination, Margins of
Philosophy, and Positions, which were published in 1972. His other works include The Post Card, Writing and Difference, Glas, The Truth in Painting, Spurs, and Memoirs of the Blind. Derrida's deconstructivist approach has become popular as a style of literary criticism partly because of the influence of the American literary theorist Paul de Man.
