Oxford Literary Review, volume 25

Editors : Thomas Dutoit
          Philippe Romanski

Project description:

At the origin of this collective endeavour, an awareness of heterogeneous
destinies and, to use his word, "destinerrancies," of Jacques Derrida: how
his work is read, and read in relation to literature, varies greatly in the
different countries of the world. Even in such geographically nearly related
places as France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany (others
ought to be included), and even within a distinct field such as Anglophone
literature, the ways in which Derrida has been or is read through literatures
in English, and vice versa, not only differ but do so for historical and
structural reasons. Moreover, for reasons of linguistic diversity and limited
distribution of such work, developments in the same fields but in different
places often remain only parallel. The present project seeks both to examine
Derrida and literatures in English now (in new readings of both) and to
reflect upon the history and future of each, from the past thirty to forty
years of their intersections while considering also how the places where such
intersections occur have governed the form they have taken or how such
intersections have changed the places in which they have occurred. Articles
might consist in readings of Derrida and Anglophone literature, with either
being represented by its so-called canonical texts or by putatively lesser
known texts; investigations of the impact, in a particular country and
therefore in particular academic or intellectual and cultural institutions,
of Derrida's work on readings of such literature.

Through our ostensible wish to circumscribe one specific field
(literature, literatures in English), we really want to show that such a
limitation is ultimately bound to be transgressed. One of the chief
interests of this small-scale test lies in the implicit assertion it makes
that compartmentalisation or categorization is bound to come unbound.
Because any "here" is likely to lead to a "there", our choice of
Anglophone literature is to be construed as a mere geographical and
epistemological debut: a mere line which, as it is being drawn, is
already erasing itself. Through our choice of Anglophone literature and of
English as the idiom for this collection of essays, we (as lecturers of
English in French universities) also wish -- though in a round-about way
(but could it be otherwise?) -- to acknowledge the clairvoyance of British
and American scholars who, for the past thirty years, have shown a
consistent and genuine interest in the works of Jacques Derrida, thereby
disseminating and developing what is still largely perceived in certain
institutional frameworks in France as just another fashionable (and
therefore transient) critical paradigm.

We are open to three kinds of articles, at least:
1) readings of literature thanks to Derrida;
2) general Derridean issues as they pertain to literature;
3) explorations of the institutional history dictating or not the very
possibility of using Derrida in the field of Anglophone literature.

Submission of articles, May 15, 2003
Please submit the article for consideration by sending it either as an
attached file (Microsoft Word) to BOTH the addresses,
Philippe.Romanski_at_liane.net and ThDutoit_at_aol.com or as printed copy to
Philippe Romanski, 12 rue du General de Gaulle, 76500 Elbeuf AND Thomas
Dutoit, 33 rue Saint Ambroise, 75011 Paris.

Publication early 2004.

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Received on Thu Oct 03 2002 - 00:20:38 EDT