Originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, deconstruction is an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. Derrida's approach consisted of conducting readings of texts with an ear to what runs counter to the intended meaning or structural unity of a particular text. The purpose of deconstruction is to show that the usage of language in a given text, and language as a whole, are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. Throughout his readings, Derrida hoped to show deconstruction at work.
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a scholarly publishing sting perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies – whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross – [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures, is a book by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Sokal is best known for the Sokal affair, in which he submitted a deliberately absurd article to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published.
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise and recondite manner, often designed to forestall further inquiry and understanding. There are two historical and intellectual denotations of Obscurantism: (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge—opposition to disseminating knowledge; and, (2) deliberate obscurity—an abstruse style characterized by deliberate vagueness.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator.
Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva is an essay written in 1907 by Sigmund Freud that subjects the novel Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen, and especially its protagonist, to psychoanalysis.
Avital Ronell is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic languages and literature and comparative literature at New York University, where she co-directs the trauma and violence transdisciplinary studies program. As Jacques Derrida Professor of Philosophy, she teaches at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee. She has written about such topics as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone; the structure of the test in legal, pharmaceutical, artistic, scientific, Zen, and historical domains; stupidity; the disappearance of authority; childhood; and deficiency. Ronell is a founding editor of the journal Qui Parle and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Geoffrey Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University in Georgia, United States, and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy in Paris. He is a literary critic and philosopher, best known as an expert on deconstruction and the works of Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. Bennington has translated many of Derrida's works into English.
Nicolas Abraham was a Hungarian-born French psychoanalyst best known for his work with Mária Török. The pair took a very individuated approach to psychoanalytic theory, thinking that the use of preset notions may be too binding upon an individual's motives to clearly fit within the framework of their personal experiences. Abraham was educated at the Sorbonne in philosophy and completed his analytical training in the 1950s.
Glas is a 1974 book by Jacques Derrida. It combines a reading of Hegel's philosophical works and of Jean Genet's autobiographical writing. "One of Derrida's more inscrutable books," its form and content invite a reflection on the nature of literary genre and of writing.
The Collège international de philosophie (Ciph), located in Paris' 5th arrondissement, is a tertiary education institute placed under the trusteeship of the French government department of research and chartered under the French 1901 Law on associations. It was co-founded in 1983 by Jacques Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Faye and Dominique Lecourt in an attempt to re-think the teaching of philosophy in France, and to liberate it from any institutional authority. Its financing is mainly through public funds. Its chairs or "directors of program" are competitively elected for 6 years, following an international open call for proposals. Proposals are free and directors are elected after a collegial, peer-assessment of their value for philosophy. The College recognizes that philosophy is better served by being located at "intersections" such as Philosophy/Science, or Philosophy/Law. Proposals must respond to this exigency of "intersection" as wished by Jacques Derrida. The College has few registered students, who may receive the Diplôme du Collège international de philosophie, which is not a university degree but may be, in some cases, validated by French or foreign universities. Otherwise, attendance to seminars is open and free.
Limited Inc is a 1988 book by Jacques Derrida, containing two essays and an interview.
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French historian and psychoanalyst, affiliated researcher in history at Paris Diderot University, in the group « Identités-Cultures-Territoires ». She also conducts a seminar on the history of psychoanalysis at the École Normale Supérieure. Biographer of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud, she mainly worked on the situation of psychoanalysis worldwide but also published on the history of French Revolution, perverts and perversion, philosophy and Judaism. She has been awarded The Prix Décembre 2014 and The Prix des Prix 2014 for her biography of Freud, Freud, In his Time and Ours published by Harvard University Press. Her work has been translated into thirty languages.
Nikos Angelos Salingaros is a mathematician and polymath known for his work on urban theory, architectural theory, complexity theory, and design philosophy. He has been a close collaborator of the architect Christopher Alexander, with whom Salingaros shares a harsh critical analysis of conventional modern architecture. Like Alexander, Salingaros has proposed an alternative theoretical approach to architecture and urbanism that is more adaptive to human needs and aspirations, and that combines rigorous scientific analysis with deep intuitive experience.
Of Grammatology is a 1967 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida that has been called a foundational text for deconstructive criticism. The book discusses writers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Étienne Condillac, Louis Hjelmslev, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Roman Jakobson, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, André Leroi-Gourhan, and William Warburton. The English translation by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was first published in 1976. A revised edition of the translation was published in 1997. A further revised edition was published in January 2016.
Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire:The Little Auto, winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize; Francis Ponge: Unfinished Ode to Mud, a finalist for the Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation; Yves Bonnefoy: The Present Hour; and books by Hélène Cixous, including Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, Manhattan, and Hyperdream, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva.
Bruce Fink is an American Lacanian psychoanalyst and a major translator of Jacques Lacan. He is the author of numerous books on Lacan and Lacanian psychoanalysis, prominent among which are Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (1995), Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan's Seminar VIII and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique.
The Gadamer–Derrida debate is an encounter between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida in April 1981 in a Sorbonne conference in Paris on "Text and Interpretation". Before this debate, there had not been any confrontation or dialogue between hermeneutics in Germany and post-structuralism in France.
