The French thinker and American academic mega-star Jacques Derrida was in Ýstanbul in May 1997 to participate in a two-day “interdisciplinary workshop with and around Jacques Derrida” at Boðaziçi University. Organized by the Phenomenology Branch of the Turkish Philosophy Association and the Georges Dumezil French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Ýstanbul, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Goethe Institute of Ýstanbul, the workshop was entitled Pera Peras Poros. One needed to know, not only Greek, to understand the title, but also French, in which language the workshop was conducted, and German, to understand the text from Heidegger which Prof. Derrida quoted in his speech the first day. With entrance reserved to privileged pre-invited participants, some of whom had come from Germany and Italy as well as Ankara and Ýzmir for the occasion, the workshop was an event of high intellectual sophistication.
Professor Derrida, who will retire next year at age 68, as French law requires, from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, teaches every fall at NYU and every spring at UC at Irvine before his classes start in France. During the three-hour-long speech he gave on Saturday, May 9, the man who it is said deconstructed Western philosophy is seen above in front of the statue of the man who deconstructed an Eastern empire.