New York Dada known and controversial across the New York, as well as American in general, art scene. His personality was equally intoxicating as his art; according to Richter, "Duchamp's attitude is that life is a melancholy joke, an indecipherable non-sense, not worth the trouble of investigating. To his superior intelligence the total absurdity of life, the contingent nature of a world denuded of all values, are logical consequences of Descartes' Cogito ergo sum." Most famous amongst the works created by Duchamp in the New York period were his ready-mades, particularly the piece entitled "Fountain". During his time in New York he maintained
Cogito and the History of Madness his point of departure for "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Foucault's 1961 book "Folie et déraison". Derrida's paper primarily relies on two sections of Foucault's work, the original 1961 preface in which Foucault makes a number of general comments about the book, setting forth his intentions and methodology, and two and a half pages at the start of the second chapter where Foucault links Descartes to an historical event that silenced madness at the end of the classical age. Foucault's 1961 text was heavily abridged for a popular edition in 1964 that formed the basis for Richard Howard's