Jim Powell. Illustrated by Van Howell.

Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he’s talking about. Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through Derrida’s blindingly obscure texts. Readers will learn the coolest Derridian buzzwords (intertextuality, binary oppositions, hymen, sous rature, arche-writing, phallogocentrism), the highand- low lights of deconstruction’s history, and the various criticisms of Derrida, including Camille Paglia’s objection that America, the rock-n-roll nation, isn’t formal enough to need deconstruction.