Divisible Derridas (Emergence)

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was one of the most influential humanistic thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beginning in the late 1960s, his most widely recognized concept of “deconstruction,” inspired by Nietzschean and Heideggerian philosophies, transformed the fields of continental philosophy, theology, postcolonial/decolonial theory, and literary studies, and ushered in more generally the current “age of theory” in the arts and humanities. The essays and interviews assembled in Divisible Derridas focus on key terms and concepts from Derrida’s philosophical “archive” and their relevance to current conversations across disciplines. Derrida’s enormous and continuing influence in the humanities is a major area of scholarship, and this volume provides a critical framework for understanding the history, applicability, and dynamism of major Derridean concepts, especially those that have informed new fields of inquiry. Moreover, the Derridean philosophical “archive” is a divisible, multiple, and living space. Scholars from across the humanities and in new fields of inquiry are finding new meaning in and relevance of Derrida’s thought and recently available posthumous work. Divisible Derridas’ featured essays by and interviews are by leading scholars who have worked closely with Derridean texts. Representing a wide range of interests, these contributors provide a historical context for major concepts and themes in Derrida’s work as well possible new trajectories of this established archive and newly available work in the future. Divisible Derridas will be of interest to scholars from many areas of humanistic research as well as advanced graduate students working on interdisciplinary research.