Shortly before his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida expressed two
paradoxical convictions: he was certain that he would be forgotten the
very day he died, yet at the same time certain that something of his
work would survive in the cultural memory. This text by Peter
Sloterdijk - one of the major figures of contemporary philosophy - makes
a contribution of its own to the preservation and continuation of
Derrida's unique and powerful work.
In this brief but illuminating text, Sloterdijk offers a series of
recontextualizations of Derrida's work by exploring the connections
between Derrida and seven major thinkers, including Hegel, Freud and
Thomas Mann. The leitmotif of this exploration is the role that Egypt
and the Egyptian pyramid plays in the philosophical imagination of the
West, from the exodus of Moses and the Jews to the conceptualization of
the pyramid as the archetype of the cumbersome objects that cannot be
taken along by the spirit on its return to itself.
'Egyptian' is the term for all constructs that can be subjected to
deconstruction - except for the pyramind, that most Egyptian of
edifices, which stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because
its form is the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that is
built to look as it would after its own collapse.
