In the last segment we were discussing the following quote from the first installment of the Dark Forces Saga:

Kyle continued working with Jan for the New Republic... teaming up with a demented, pint-sized lagomorph and nearly razing Space Station Kwenn while apprehending the freelance Ketton spy Derrida.

We went into detail about the origins of Kyle Katarn, star of the Dark Forces video games, as well as the secret character Max, the psycho bunny from Sam & Max: Freelance Police.

That left the origins of the third member of this unwholesome threesome to be revealed, the spy Derrida.

Qui est Derrida?

Derrida's first and only appearance until the Dark Forces Saga was in the West End Games book Alliance Intelligence Reports, written by Craig Carey, J.P. Pietrzak, and Trevor J. Wilson. A wonderful book published in 1995 and written particularly with Star Wars fan cognoscenti in mind, a very small section of it is devoted to one of the bad guys the Rebels have on file named Derrida.

Ironically, however, this villain shares a name with a modern-day French philosopher of some renown and controversy. Jacques Derrida is frequently referred to as the father of the philosophy known as Deconstruction. With some justification, his theories have been compared to skepticism, relativism, nihilism, and even to those of analytical contemporary and ideological nemesis W.V.O. Quine. Deconstructionists turn into a twitchy bunch, perhaps rightfully so, when anyone attempts to summarize Derrida's theories, given their slippery precision and sweeping scope. But, Force take me, I'll try to do it very succinctly here.

One of the themes of Deconstruction is illuminating a problem that is as old as precise rational thought itself--everything seems to matter. That is, when trying to define or understand something - language, furniture, silverware, meatballs, toilet paper, bubble gum - objectively, the context of the thing in question has to be clearly understood. But the context of that thing in question is made up of stuff just like it, other things which are also dependent on undefined and undetermined stuff (including the undefined original thing in question) for their meaning.

Folks can see the problem then. If the thing in question is dependent for its meaning on other things, and other things are dependent on more undefined stuff, how can the first thing (the thing in question) be meaningfully defined? The question then logically extends to those things we said the first thing was dependent on for meaning, which are basically in the same boat dependency-wise. And on and on until you realize that a clear objective definition for everything you thought you knew has been "deconstructed."

There, that'll do.

So, what have we learned? For the purposes of this blog, all you need to understand is that, at its starkest, Deconstruction gives carte blanche in interpreting reality. Useful. We'll come back to this.

Now to the Star Wars Derrida.

If this Star Wars character was intended as a caricature of the philosopher, it is of the most unflattering sort. Depicted as a bulbous-headed, gangly, fanged, four-eyed, triple-jointed limbed member of the alien Ketton race, Derrida is not only an Imperial spy but hideous.

Still, the biggest strike against the likelihood of mockery is that, beyond describing the Derrida character as fond of "mischief," for which the real-life Derrida has a reputation, there are no overt parodies of Deconstructionist philosophies in the alien's bio. As a definitive strike against this interpretation, however, the Derrida of Alliance Intelligence Reports is not only philosophically indifferent, but a female--suggesting that if the authors had any intention of parodying Derrida, it's so convoluted you'd probably have to be a Deconstructionist to figure it out.

Fortunately, I can help with that.

The thought of re-teaming Kyle and Max had been in my mind since originally writing the Dark Forces Saga for the short-lived Star Wars Gamer magazine half a decade ago. But after Jacques Derrida passed away late last year, I couldn't resist paying a little homage to this great thinker. While I hadn't known Derrida personally, I'd become familiar with his work and felt he had contributed something meaningful to the discussion of philosophy. In my usual method of killing two, three, or four birds with one stone, I thought while paying homage I'd anticipate the inevitable, if playful, nay-sayers who might call me out on perpetuating the quasi-canonical Kyle/Max tag team joke. I'd already covered my butt by not explicitly calling Max by name but dropping enough hints for his identity to be inferred by detail-oriented fans, a technique I'm partial to in and out of my Star Wars writing. But I figured why not go for broke, and suggest that reality itself might not be as real as you think (especially in the context of a fictional story).

Using a post-modernist philosophy as a way to account for a lunatic rabbit from another fictional universe may seem like overkill, and worse, it may seem like further corruption of the Star Wars story. But I say why not. LucasArts started the joke, after all, and George Lucas himself snuck E.T. into The Phantom Menace. Furthermore, all these quasi-canonical Easter eggs are only implied, not to mention done with the best intentions.

Deconstruction has often been called the end of philosophy, and perhaps that analogy is apt here. While I'd hardly call this Kyle/Max/Derrida joke the end of continuity, it does highlight an intractable aspect of continuity. Life often subverts our categorization, and despite the best efforts of the best - Dan, Tasty Taste, Pabs - Star Wars continuity will, for the forseeable future, always be undermined. When Dan Wallace's first Essential Chronology came out, I recall how miffed he was that there, on the very first page, he'd made a continuity booboo. And despite addressing a plethora of continuity errors in each project I've undertaken, I inevitably clock in an average of at least one new snafu per project. The most frustrating example, perhaps, happened in an article on the Droids cartoon series, where my co-author Rich Handley and I blew it in the very last sentence. Grrr...

Anyone is completely within his or her right to ask, "Who cares? They're just movies." Well said. We're not even discussing the movies, really, only a spin-off book or stupid article. A better question is, why do we care? And the answer is because, irrationally, everyone cares about something. It's just a stupid game, it's just a stupid car, it's just a stupid sweater, it's just a stupid toy, he's just a stupid boy, she's just a stupid girl, it's just a stupid theory, it's just stupid continuity are all statements that would probably upset various persons, and have probably lent themselves to more than a few bar fights.

Okay, maybe not bar fights. Or maybe just at Comic-Con.

But sometimes it really isn't stupid, the thinker says. Other folks just haven't thought it through.

That may be true, great thinker. I, at least, think it might be. But if that is the case, oh wise guy, do us all a favor and share with others the wisdom with which you've been graced, using the utmost patience, tact, and, if you can swing it, panache. Maybe it's a lot to ask, but our options otherwise are the shields of pretentiousness or dogmatic common sense. Socratic humility, as always, is the most advantageous starting point.

And that's the tale of the second most ambitious Star Wars Easter egg I've ever attempted!

This is the end of Side Two. To start the story on Side One, please stop the page, turn it over, and press "Play". ~ Abel G. Peņa

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