Jacques Derrida is one of those philosophers that not so many people have heard of, but a lot use his ideas without knowing it. For example, he is the man responsible more than any other for popularizing the term “deconstruction”, though what he meant by that term and how we use it today have become somewhat detached. He made his name by brilliantly deconstructing other philosophers and, in so doing—along with Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan, all of whom are also characters in my book—created post-structuralism, the philosophical basis of postmodernism.

Unlike the others mentioned above, who love nothing better than getting arseholed and scrapping with each other whenever I see them, Derrida has retreated to a hideout deep in the Philippine jungle. As part of my quest, I travel up-river on a boat with Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Nishida for company, until I find him a la Colonel Kurtz, surrounded by the heads of all the philosophers he's deconstructed on spikes.