Deconstruction

Catalog description

Deconstruction is most closely associated with the pioneering work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Nonetheless, in the decades after Derrida?s work became influential in philosophical circles, deconstructive ideas traveled across multiple disciplinary and national borders. In the United States, a distinctive literary-theoretical form of deconstruction became associated with the austere and troubling writings of Paul de Man, and others based in Comparative Literature at Yale. Deconstruction?s imprint was equally felt in film studies, in art theory, and in architecture. In this class, we will begin with Derrida?s path-breaking essays of the late 1960?s, before tracing their travel, and transformation, from literary theory to feminism, from film theory to Afropessimism, and we will ask-what of deconstruction now?