It is 50 years since the publication of Jacques Derrida’s « La mythologie blanche: la métaphore dans le texte philosophique » in the journal Poétique (1971). As the proofs of La mythologie blanche held in the archives testify, the essay draws on the course Théorie du discours philosophique that Derrida taught between 1969 and 1971. The essay, which at the time sparked an important debate, has today receded from the forestage of philosophical discussion. In the original course, Derrida explores the relationship between philosophy and other discourses and the possibility of a theory of philosophical discourse. On this score, the idea of metaphor emerges as both fundamental and problematic: designating at once a relation and a limit between philosophy and its outside, the form of an inclusion of non-philosophical otherness within the discourse of philosophy. La mythologie blanche can be read as an attempt to think through the consequences of this form of constitutive heterogeneity.

Our seminar at the next ACLA annual meeting aims to provide a forum for a two-day discussion of La mythologie blanche. We encourage proposals for 20-25-minute papers that investigate the relevance of this essay to Derrida’s wider work, as well as to current debates surrounding the boundaries of the philosophical. Please submit an abstract for this seminar through https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting by October 31.

Possible topics include: metaphor in feminist, queer, and critical race studies; metaphor in the history of philosophy; metaphor in new materialisms; philosophy and the sciences/technology; responses to La mythologie blanche; theories of philosophical discourse

Organizers: Giovanni Menegalle (King's College London), Mauro Senatore (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile)