Derrida eulogizing Pierre Bourdieu here in Le Monde; Jennifer had just given me The Work of Mourning for my last birthday. What a peculiar role for Derrida, chronicling the passing of the monumental generation of philosophico-cultural types among whom he has stood! And yet (complaints from the peanut gallery notwithstanding) he’s one of the contemporary writers whom I would most readily trust with a delicate topic. He writes with exquisite precision; indeed, the precision with which he writes constitutes one of the major impediments to reading him, since his finesse requires a concomitant close attention from the reader.
And with Bourdieu’s death, we lose yet another brilliant topographer of [post]modern culture.