essay
by ALEPH MOLINARI
In the early aughts, I came across the documentary Derrida, directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Shot with a MiniDV cam, the video seems uncanny today with its turn-of-the-millennium aesthetic and score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The documentary shows a deeply intimate portrait of the philosopher in his everyday life, at home and at work, teaching and traveling. In 2003, Jacques Derrida traveled to Robben Island in South Africa to visit the empty prison cell once occupied by the ceaseless freedom fighter Nelson Mandela for 18 long years of his 27-year sentence. Mandela was unjustly imprisoned for his refusal to accept a system of dispossession of human rights and the dehumanization of the majority of South Africa’s population. Apartheid stripped black South Africans of citizenship, of freedom of movement, and of the right to vote, to own land, and to love across the color…