• Frei Peter

• Frei Peter

Derrida’s Deconstruction: Thinking (with) Literature

At the heart of one of the most influential critical endeavors in literary studies and more broadly the Humanities of the 20^th century, both in Europe and around the World, the word ‘deconstruction’ has entered everyday language at the cost of becoming a mere slogan void of its philosophical radicality. For Jacques Derrida, who made it into the emblem of a new form of thinking and writing, deconstruction is in fact the attempt to understand in its contradictions and blind spots the constitution of Western thought and its representations. From the classics of literature (Rousseau, Shakespeare) to the avant-garde (Joyce, Blanchot), literary fictions have played a crucial role in this enterprise, both as objects of study as well as the possibility of another form of thinking, of imagining the world. This seminar offers the opportunity to deal more closely with how Derrida’s work helps us understand the workings of literature and our own approach to literary writing on the basis of his most important contributions to literary studies as well as of those who continued the work of deconstruction, from gender to postcolonial studies.

The reading material will be made available on Moodle.