In Continental philosophy, the term invagination is used to explain a special kind of metanarrative. It was first used by Maurice Merleau-Ponty[1] (French: invagination) to describe the dynamic self-differentiation of the 'flesh'. It was later used by Rosalind E. Krauss and Jacques Derrida ("The Law of Genre", Glyph 7, 1980); for Derrida, an invaginated text is a narrative that folds upon itself, "endlessly swapping outside for inside and thereby producing a structure en abyme".[2] He applies the term to such texts as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment[2] and Maurice Blanchot's La Folie du Jour.[3] Invagination is an aspect of différance, since according to Derrida it opens the "inside" to the "other" and denies both inside and outside a stable identity.[4]

References

  1. ^ Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968). The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. p. 152. ISBN 0810104571.
  2. ^ a b Chaplin, Susan (2004). Law, Sensibility, and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Women's Fiction: Speaking of Dread. Ashgate. p. 23. ISBN 9780754633068. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
  3. ^ Jones, Amelia (2003). The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Psychology Press. p. 200. ISBN 9780415267069. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
  4. ^ Wortham, Simon Morgan (2010). The Derrida Dictionary. Continuum International. p. 76. ISBN 9781847065261. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
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