Derrida’s Black Accent: Decolonial Deconstruction

Abstract

Jacques Derrida: If we were here to talk about me, which is not the case, I would tell you that, in a different but analogous manner, it’s the same thing for me. I was born into a family of Algerian Jews who spoke French, but that was not really their language of origin. I wrote a little book on the subject, and in a certain way I am always in the process of speaking what I call the “monolingualism of the other”. I have no contact of any sort with my language of origin, or rather that of my supposed ancestors.1