After Derrida

This collection of essays explores the main concepts and methods of reading launched by French philosopher Jacques Derrida who died in 2004. Derrida exerted a huge influence on literary critics in the 1980s, but later there was a backlash against his theories. Today, one witnesses a general return to his way of reading literature, the rationale of which is detailed and explained in the essays. The authors, both well-known and younger specialists, give many precise examples of how Derrida, who always remained at the cusp between literature and philosophy, posed fundamental questions and thus changed the field of literary criticism, especially with regard to poetry. The contributors also highlight the way Derrida made spectacular interventions in feminism, psychoanalytic studies, animal studies, digital humanities and post-colonial studies.

Jean-Michel Rabaté was a student of Jacques Derrida at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and defended his dissertation under the supervision of Helene Cixous. Since 1992, he has been Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the managing editors of the Journal of Modern Literature and a co-founder and senior curator of the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia. Since 2008, he has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of more than 35 books and collections of essays on modernism (Pound, Joyce, Beckett), the arts, and philosophy.