CRMEP Public Lecture Panel: Derrida's Archive Fever, 30 Years On

Thirty years after the French philosopher Jacques Derrida first delivered the lecture that became the book Archive Fever (French ed., 1995; English, 1996), the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) convened a panel at the Zaha Hadid Foundation to discuss its legacy today in the context of the increasing ‘archivalization’ of art and culture.

Isabelle Alfandary is a philosopher and psychoanalyst, Professor of American Literature and Critical Theory at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. She is the author of Derrida-Lacan: L’écriture entre psychanalyse et déconstruction. Naomi Waltham-Smith is an interdisciplinary scholar and a professor based at Merton College, University of Oxford. Her latest book is Mapping (Post-)colonial Paris by Ear (2023). Eric Prenowitz is the translator of the English edition of Derrida’s Archive Fever and also of works by Hélène Cixous. He is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.

The panel was chaired by Professor Simon Wortham (Kingston University), author of Counter-Institutions: Derrida and the University (2006) and more recently a series of short novels (2020–23) published by Ma Bibliothèque.