Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck
Department of English Professor Birger Vanwesenbeeck has written a scholarly article, “Paul de Man’s Flemish,” published in the winter issue of the top-tier quarterly journal Comparative Literature published by Duke University Press.
The oldest journal in the field in the United States and the flagship journal of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Comparative Literature publishes cutting-edge research on literary history and theory.
Dr. Vanwesenbeeck’s essay breaks new ground in showing how the late-career Anglophone writings of the Belgian-born theorist Paul de Man bear witness to his ongoing experience of native-linguistic loss. More pertinently still, Vanwesenbeeck’s essay argues that the deconstructive theory of “language-as-other,” which de Man, together with French philosopher Jacques Derrida helped found, is rooted in these two thinkers’ less-than-holistic relationship to the languages in which they wrote, namely English and French.
Vanwesenbeeck’s essay can be accessed online, and an abstract is available online.
