Writing & Society Research Centre Seminar

Bruno Clement will be discussing Jacques Derrida and his relation with Universities, and in particular the founding of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Bruno Clement is Professor of Literature at the University of Paris, VIII. He is a former director of the Collège International de Philosophie, and the author of numerous books including Le Lecteur et son modèle [The Reader and their Model], which considers questions of misinterpretations or misunderstandings as productive readings, Le Malentendu – généalogie du geste herméneutique [Misunderstanding — A Genealogy of the Hermeneutic Gesture] , which examines the idea that hermeneutics, itself, or the ‘science of interpretation’ involves misunderstanding and works through, productive, misinterpretation; Le Récit de la méthode, [The Story of Method] which considers the idea of ‘Method’ and how ‘method’ is developed, in literary and philosophy, after the fact, as a way of organising our understanding of the work produced; and L'Invention du commentaire, Augustin, Jacques Derrida, [The Invention of Commentary, Augustine, Jacques Derrida] which looks at the idea of commentary through the lens of an examination of Derrida’s reading of Augustine’s Confessions in his own confessional book, Circonfession. His most recent book is La Voix verticale – essai sur la prosopopée, [The Vertical Voice — An essay on prosopopoeia] which examines the rhetorical device of prosopopoeia.