I joked with a friend the other day that I start each morning by thinking about Derrida. This wasn’t meant as a hyperbolic comment acknowledging my fascination with French poststructuralism; it was simply an account of my typical workday routine. You see, each morning, just before NPR news gives way to the NET “Signature Story,” I step out of the shower and make eye contact with my cat, and in that moment, I think about Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am. Derrida’s medi