__NOTOC__ This is a list of thinkers who have been associated with or influenced by deconstruction, a term developed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004).
The thinkers included in this list have Wikipedia pages and satisfy at least one of the three following additional criteria: he or she has written about deconstruction; used uniquely deconstructive concepts in a published work; or has stated outright that deconstruction has influenced his or her thinking.
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B Houston A. Baker, Jr.: Baker is an influential theorist for African-American literature whose work draws on ideas from Jacques Derrida. Jack Balkin: Balkin is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School and a renowned critical legal theorist. On his blog, Balkin said that deconstruction influenced his intellectual life.Balkinization Geoffrey Bennington: Bennington is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University, as well as a member of the International College of Philosophy. He is a literary critic and philosopher, best known as an expert on deconstruction and the works of Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. He has translated many of Derrida's works into English.Publications Bennington co-wrote the book Jacques Derrida with Derrida.(1993) Bennington, Geoffrey, et al. Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida is a double book made by Derrida himself and Bennington in which the latter presents an analytic account of the former's work in the upper portion of each page ('Derridabase'), which Derrida then attempts to disrupt or outflank in the lower portion ('Circumfession'). Robert Bernasconi: Bernasconi is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. Bernasconi has written extensively on Heidegger and also Gadamer, Levinas, and Arendt, among others, recently pursuing an interest in race and racism. He has acknowledged and discussed the enormous importance of Derrida's contribution to the study of Heidegger.(1993) Bernasconi, Robert, Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing Homi K. Bhabha: Bhabha is a postcolonial theorist, currently teaching at Harvard University, where he is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language. Bhabha brings together the insights of deconstruction and psychoanalysis in his investigations of social subordination.ArtandCulture Artist: Homi K. Bhabha Harold Bloom: Bloom was the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English and American Literature at New York University. In 1979, Bloom contributed to the influential Deconstruction and Criticism,(1979) Bloom, Harold, et al. Deconstruction and Criticism a foundational text for the Yale School of deconstruction. Later, in a 1983 interview with Robert Moynihan, Bloom said, "What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology... There is no escape, there is simply the given, and there is nothing that we can do."Presidential Lectures: Harold Bloom: Interviews In accordance, Slavoj Žižek has identified the mid-to-late 1980s as the period when Derrida's deconstruction shifted from a radical negative theology to a Kantian idealism.(2006) Zizek, Slavoj "A Plea for a Return to Differance (with a minor 'Pro Domo Sua')" Critical Inquiry 32 (2): 226–249 In 1989, Bloom eschewed any identification with the Yale School's technical, methodological approach to literary criticism.Harold Bloom Interview He stated that "there is no method except yourself" and observed that deconstruction as a mode of thought is best understood as unique to Derrida. In a 2003 interview, Bloom recalled that in his past he found himself "fighting" deconstructionists. In the same interview, he stated that the deconstructionists were his friends and that what interests him in language is the Absolute, a notion he shares with Yale School deconstructionists and the negative theology of kabbalists.Ranting Against Cant Karin de Boer is a Dutch Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leuven. She is known for her works in modern philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy. Judith Butler: Butler is a prominent American post-structuralist philosopher and has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. They are Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Many of Butler's works have taken up deconstructive themes.
C John D. Caputo: Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and the founder of weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, and theology. He attempts to read the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as a deconstructionist.(2008) Caputo, John D. How to Read Kierkegaard Stanley Cavell: Cavell was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Cavell has written on Derrida's work.Harvard University Department of Philosophy: Professor Emeritus Stanley Cavell Hélène Cixous: Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician.Presidential Lectures: Hélène Cixous Home Joseph Cohen: University College Dublin professor who studied under Derrida at postgraduate level and has written extensively about Derrida and Levinas.Cohen, J. (2012). Levinas and the Problem of Phenomenology. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 20(3), 363–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2012.699309. - Cohen, J. (2012). ‘Introduction: Emmanuel Levinas’-From Philosophy to the Other. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 20(3), 315-317. - Cohen, J. (2026). Levinas, Emmanuel (1905/06–1995). In Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (pp. 1-17). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. - Cohen, J. (2003). Questions pour Jacques Derrida. Paris: Galilée. Drucilla Cornell: Cornell is a professor of political science, women's studies, and comparative literature at Rutgers University.Polisci.rugers.edu Simon Critchley: Critchley teaches philosophy at the New School for Social Research. Critchley has written a number of books on Derrida, including The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas and Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, and Contemporary French Thought.(1999) Critchley, Simon Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, and Contemporary French Thought Critchley has said that Derrida was a "brilliant reader" and that it is imperative to follow his example.Simon Critchley | Jacques Derrida | Theory & Event 8:1 Jonathan Culler: Culler is Class of 1966 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. He has written a number of books about deconstruction.Jonathan D. Culler
D Hamid Dabashi: Dabashi is an Iranian-born American intellectual historian, cultural and literary critic best known for his scholarship on Iran and Shi'a Islam. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies.Hamid Dabashi's Official Web Site In the essay "In the Absence of the Face", Dabashi uses deconstructive methods in his investigation of the Judeo-Islamic heritage.(2000) Dabashi, Hamid “In the Absence of the Face,” Social Research, Volume 67, Number 1. Spring 2000. pp. 127–185. Samuel R. Delany: Delany is an American science fiction author, widely known in the academic world as a literary critic. His essays and novels have been influenced by deconstruction.The Chronicle: 10/22/2004: Derrida, a Pioneer of Literary Theory, Dies Jacques Derrida: Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. He famously wrote "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" (there is no outside-of-the-text).Derrida's controversial, first-run New York Times obituaryDerrida's second-run New York Times obituary, by Mark C. Taylor (q.v.). Alexander García Düttmann: Düttmann is Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work focuses on art, language, history, politics, and deconstruction. He published Self Portrait and Lifelines and a text about Visconti. His research has focused on the relationship between language and history in authors such as Adorno, Benjamin and Heidegger.Goldsmiths.ac.uk Paulo Cesar Duque-Estrada: Duque-Estrada is Professor of Philosophy at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, with a Ph.D at Boston College. He founded the Study Group in Ethics and Deconstruction, (NEED- Núcleo de Estudos em Ética e Desconstrução) and has published various works on Derrida, Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, and Husserl. He was the first to bring Derrida's thought to the field of philosophy within the academic environment in Brazil.
E Lee Edelman: (1953–) American queer theorist and Fletcher Professor of English Literature at Tufts University. Author of Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (1994) and No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2005). Edelman is famous for his critique of reproductive futurism and his controversial insistence on the antisocial quality of sexuality. Jacques Ehrmann: (1931–1972) French literary theorist and faculty member of the Yale University French Department from 1961 until his death in 1972. Influential in the Structuralism movement in the 1960s leading up to deconstruction. As contemporary and peer of Jacques Derrida, he invited him to Yale for the first time in 1968.
F Shoshana Felman: Felman is Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where she became Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature. Although much of Felman's more recent work focuses on Lacanian psychoanalysis, her early work was heavily influenced by the Yale school of deconstruction. Christopher Fynsk: Fynsk is a Professor in the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen and at the European Graduate School.Christopher Fynsk – Professor at European Graduate School In his book, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity (1993, 2nd edn.), he acknowledges that "the influence of Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy on the pages that follow is far greater than I have been able to indicate."(1993) Fynsk, Christopher, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, p. 9 He was also a participant in Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political.(1997) Fynsk, Christopher, "Contribution I" in Simon Sparks (ed.), Retreating the Political Mark Fisher who understood the liminality and aporia of hauntology as opening up new possibilities for politics.
G Rodolphe Gasché: Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the author of numerous books, including the influential The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (1986),(1986) Gasché, Rodolphe The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection and Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (1994).(1994) Gasché, Rodolphe Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida
H Werner Hamacher: Hamacher is Professor for General and Comparative Literature at the University of Frankfurt and is Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Hamacher writes in the tradition of the Yale School of deconstruction and touches on topics including politics, literature, and philosophy.