Proud of its wandering, "uprooted, anonymous, unattached to any house or
country," as Derrida says, Deconstruction. has been given an opportunity
to settle down, however tattered it might now be in its repose. But has
pride in homelessness--the strength of the rigor of its strategy of
dis-enclosure--proven finally to be at once its liability, the basis of
its historical discredit, and this even within the community of
Deconstruction itself? (Jean-Luc Nancy seemed to think so!)

We cannot avoid internal exegesis in this class, or the temptations to
describe relations of Deconstruction with its intimates: with
phenomenology, Sartrean existentialism, with the object relations school
of psychoanalysis, with Bataille, Levinas and the Frankfurt School, with
victim focus (animal rights, disability studies etc.). But particular
emphasis will be placed here upon the epochal aspect of the movement, the
variability of the performance of it in the variety of its national
contexts--its contrasting American and French lives in which its signature
defense of irreducible eccentricity is contrastively interactive with
greater and lesser degrees of blindnesses, from the theological to the
economic.

Readings include:
Derrida, Of Grammatology
Derrida, The Truth in Painting
Nancy, Dis-enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity
Nancy, Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body

Meets with C LIT 510 and ENGL 510
Graduate students only