Post-Deconstructive Thought and Criticism

Abstract

Since deconstruction’s heyday in literary criticism, perhaps most prominently represented in the major works of figures such as Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller and Barbara Johnson, Derrida’s influence has continued to make a significant and enduring mark on scholarship within the humanities. Within UK French studies alone, significant critical and philosophical engagements with Derrida by figures such as Geoffrey Bennington, Marion Hobson, and Christina Howells ensured that throughout the 1990s and the first two decades of the twenty-first century generations of students and scholars continued to be introduced to the philosophical and critical insights of deconstructive thought. Derrida’s influence in relation to our understanding of literature and literary themes or questions has continued to make a decisive impact. Yet it has also generated significant research which exceeds the scope of the literary, taking in questions of anthropology, technology, and cybernetics, or wider ethical themes such as hospitality that push deconstructive thought further into more developed explorations of some of its concerns, for example, issues relating to sexual difference or perspectives on animals and the limits of the human. Even if one were to restrict oneself to UK French studies, the scope and impact of Derrida’s continued influence is far in excess of what can be accounted for in a short survey or overview.