To Deconstruct That which We Cannot Live Without: The strategies of Jacques Derrida
Open PEI Summer Course by Manuel Asensi
Although the words that give this course its title are Gayatri Spivak's, they could easily have been Derrida's.
The term Deconstruction has been assimilated into film language, politics and even gastronomy. As such, this course should be seen as a gesture of resistance to the institutional appropriation of this philosophical approach. Over several sessions, Manuel Asensi will examine the keys of Derridian thought as strategies for defence and attack against fascism.
It is a way of finding a path through the labyrinth of Derrida's essays, one of the most radical and singular expressions of the theory of discourse that straddles two centuries, and also a means to find ways of responding to the habits of historic naturalisation that all too often make life invisible.
Programme
Thursday 30 June, Friday 1, Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 July at 7 pm.
Saturday 2 at 12 am
Thursday June 30
The Need for Deconstruction: an introduction to the foundations of Derridian thought
The first session will offer an overview of Derrida's work and answer the questions: where does the need for deconstruction arise from? Why deconstruct instead of constructing coherent architectural systems, for example? What should we deconstruct? Metaphysics and racism. Metaphysics and sexism.
Friday July 1
The Centrality of Writing as a Matrix for Logocentrism
The second session will focus on analysing the term (phal)logocentrism and the way it is expressed in Western philosophy's insistence on the repression of writing and of the body. It will also explore the various allegorisations of this term that have developed in fields such as postcolonial critique and queer theory.
Saturday July 2
Screening
Safaa Fathy, D'ailleurs Derrida, 1999, 1 h 8 min
Monday July 4
Strategies of Deconstruction: How to deconstruct
The third session will introduce participants to forms of reading and looking "deconstructively", by exploring some of Derrida's most famous deconstructions (Heidegger, Saussare, Mallaremé) . There will be a particular focus on the role of "art" (always in inverted commas) in deconstructive work.
Tuesday July 5
The Politics of Jacques Derrida
The fourth session will look at the "political" philosophy of Derrida in conjunction with the political theories of postmodernity, Derrida's debate with Marxism as expressed in the book Spectres of Marx, and his dialogues with anti-systemic thought.
Manuel Asensi is professor of Literary Theory in the Philology department at the University of Valencia and has been a visiting professor at several universities in Europe and the United States. He is the director of the Humanities Collection of the publishing house Tirant lo Blanch and a cultural critic for the Cultura/s supplement of the newspaper La Vanguardia. His field of research focuses on literary theory and criticism, Spanish literature, film, and art criticism. His publications include Historia de la teoría de la literatura (two volumes) and Los años salvajes de la teoría (Philippe Sollers, Tel Quel y la génesis del post-estructuralismo francés).
Tel. 93 481 33 58
pei [at] macba [dot] cat