Dr. Chris Hall, assistant professor of English at University of the Ozarks, presented research in progress this summer at the Derrida Today conference held in Athens, Greece, June 10-14. The conference is a biennial gathering of scholars writing on the work of philosopher Jacques Derrida and the theory of deconstruction.
Hall’s paper, titled “Oikonomia, Geschlecht, and the Zone of Ethics,” sketches out a mode of rereading the political organization of life, arguing that the terms of identity by which we make ourselves legible should be understood as aspects of a larger economy of managing life in the modern state (an “oikonomia”). Inevitably, this situation creates a hierarchy of identities, with major implications for what is assumed to be the proper governing of institutions and the practice of scholarly disciplines. Hall’s paper contends that a deconstructive approach to life enables us to reconfigure this economy and avoid the dead-ends of identarian thinking, in favor of an ethics of openness to life of all kinds.
The paper is part of Hall’s book project in progress, “Life after Identity,” which has been supported by a Fall 2023 research leave semester and builds upon work presented by Hall at Robson Library earlier this spring. The book argues that contemporary politics has become a matter of identity across the spectrum, and articulates a response to this condition through a hospitable rethinking of what counts as life and how that life comes to assume belonging within available categories of population and subjectivity. Most recently, Hall has published work on this theme in the Angelaki journal of theoretical humanities, available HERE.
Hall, who joined the U of O faculty in 2021, earned his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Kansas, with a focus on the study of modernist literature, postcolonial writing, and critical theory.
Topics: English, Faculty Spotlights