François Raffoul
Professor
PhD: Doctorate, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France (1995)
Phone: 225-578-2278
E-mail: fraffo1@lsu.edu
Office: 106 Coates Hall
Biography
Professor Raffoul is an alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, is agrégé de philosophie, and holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Jacques Derrida, advisor). He specializes in contemporary French thought, on which he has published and lectured extensively. He has authored several monographs, as well as numerous articles on continental figures such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Lacan. His research has focused on continental theories of subjectivity, in particular its ethical dimension, exploring the issue of responsibility in contemporary continental thought. His reflection on ethics has also paid special care to the phenomenological concept of facticity. He is completing a new book on the question of the event in contemporary continental thought. He is the author of Heidegger and the Subject (Prometheus Books, 1999), A Chaque fois Mien (Paris: Galilée, 2004) and The Origins of Responsibility (Indiana University Press, 2010). He is the co-editor of several volumes: Disseminating Lacan (1996), Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (2002), Rethinking Facticity (2008), French Interpretations of Heidegger (2008) and The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger (Bloomsbury, 2014). He has co-translated several French philosophers, in particular Jean-Luc Nancy (The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan (1992), The Gravity of Thought (1998), The Creation of the World or Globalization (2007), Identity (Fordham U. Press, 2014), Jacques Derrida’s Ulysses Gramophone (SUNY Press, 2013), and Dominique Janicaud’s Heidegger in France (Indiana U. Press, 2015). He is also the co-translator of Heidegger's Four Seminars (Indiana U. Press, 2004). He co-directs the book series Contemporary French Thought for SUNY Press.
Awards & Honors
- Selected as one of the 2008 LSU "Rainmakers" Honoring the 100 top faculty at LSU ATLAS Recipient of the grant, 2006-2007 (LSU)
- Recipient of the 2001 Summer Research Fellowships Manship (LSU)
- Recipient of the 2012 Summer Research Fellowships Manship (LSU)
Selected Publications
Books
- Thinking the Event (Indiana U. Press, 2020), 378pp.
- The Origins of Responsibility (Indiana U. Press, 2010), 328 pp.
- A Chaque fois Mien (Paris, France: Galilee, 2004), 267 pp.
- Heidegger and the Subject (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999), 320 pp.
Selected Articles
“Engaging with Jean-Luc Nancy,” with Adelaide Russo, in a special issue of Comparative Literature on “Odyssey: Exile and Return,” eds Adelaide Russo and Michelle Zerba, 2015
“Deconstruction as Aporetic Thinking,” in Oxford Literary Review, a special issue on A Decade after Derrida, Issue 36.2, December 2014
"Chez lui chez l’autre," Invited chapter for a special issue of Les Temps Modernes on the thought of Jacques Derrida, 2012.
"The question of otherness between between Levinas and Heidegger," in Tropos. Rivista di e critica ermeneutica filosofica, co-directed by G. and G. Vattimo Chiurazzi (Università degli Studi di Torino). 2012
“La création du monde,” in Jean-Luc Nancy. Figures du Dehors (Nicole Parfait, Paris, France, 2011).
"The Aporia of History," Invited paper for a special issue of the journal POLIGRAFI on the theme of "Natural History," 2011.
"Derrida and the ethics of the impossible," Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. Special issue on the thought of Jacques Derrida, Spring 2007.
"L’être et l’autre," in Heidegger: Le danger et la promesse, edited by Gerard Bensussan et Joseph Cohen (Paris: Kimé, 2006).
"Le Rien du monde", in Lieux Propices. L’énonciation des lieux/Le lieu de l’énonciation dans les contextes francophones interculturels, edited by Adelaide Russo and Simon Harel, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005.
Courses Recently Offered
- FREN 7410: French Deconstruction
- PHIL 3003: French Existentialism
- PHIL 4003: Contemporary French Thought
- PHIL 4952 / CL 7120: Philosophy of the Event
- PHIL 4954: The Thought of Jacques Derrida
- PHIL 7903: Philosophy of Responsibility