The Village Voice has published an interesting anecdotal essay by Leland de la Durantaye on the cult of personality surrounding the late, great Jacques Derrida. De la Durantaye describes the curious crowds that Derrida's lectures would attract, including a "giant double" who regularly attended the talks and asked questions that were "mirror image[s]" of the topic on which Derrida had just spoken. He admits to wondering whether this uncanny phenomenon, of the bizarro Derrida and his nonsensical queries, might not've been staged by Derrida, "a master of conceptual disguise." The prospect that "the two were working in concert" is intriguing. While I'm sure Derrida would appreciate the dadaist flavor of such a scene, I have difficulty believing that he would go to such lengths to pull one over his audiences.
On a related note, I'm pleased to see that over four-thousand people have added their signatures to the Jacques Derrida In Memoriam page.
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