Continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...

, the term invagination is used to explain a special kind of

metanarrative A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; french: métarécit) is a narrative ''about'' narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet ...

. It was first used by

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...

(french: invagination) to describe the dynamic self-differentiation of the 'flesh'. It was later used by

Rosalind E. Krauss Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic ...

and

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

("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''". He applies the term to such texts as

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

's ''

Critique of Judgment The ''Critique of Judgment'' (german: Kritik der Urteilskraft), also translated as the ''Critique of the Power of Judgment'', is a 1790 book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Sometimes referred to as the "third critique," the ''Critique o ...

'' and

Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post- ...

's ''La Folie du Jour''. Invagination is an aspect of

différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida. It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. The term means "difference and deferral of meaning." Overview Derr ...

, since according to Derrida it opens the "inside" to the "other" and denies both inside and outside a stable identity.

References

Deconstruction Continental philosophy Literary concepts {{philo-concept-stub