Report for Professional Development Assignment 2011-12
Pleshette DeArmitt, Department of Philosophy
I am grateful to have been awarded a Professional Development Assignment by the University of
Memphis in 2010-2011, which I combined with an American Postdoctoral Research Leave
Fellowship ($30,000) granted by the American Association of University Women during the same
academic year. This important research leave period allowed me to complete one book manuscript,
begin research on a second book project, publish one article, and give four conference papers in the
US and Canada.
Most significantly, my PDA afforded me the opportunity to complete a six-chapter book manuscript,
The Right to Narcissism: A Case for an Im-possible Self-love, which was granted a contract by
Fordham University Press in March 2012. The book is now in production and is slated to appear in
Fall 2013. The book, which is divided into three parts: “Rousseau: The Passions of Narcissus,”
“Kristeva: The Rebirth of Narcissus,” and “Derrida: The Mourning of Narcissus,” calls for a
rethinking of the concept of narcissism and aims to wrest it from its common and pejorative
meanings, egoism and vanity, to reveal the complexity and importance of this notion. In this book, I
examine new understandings of narcissism as a complex self-other relation that can give rise to
more felicitous ways of conceiving of love, creativity, obligation, and justice.
My second book, a monograph entitled Sarah Kofman’s Life-writing, is underway thanks to my
research leave. The manuscript will assess the interdisciplinary corpus of this important 20th
Century French feminist philosopher. My over-arching contention is that Kofman’s oeuvre gives us
a new form of theoretical or philosophical writing and analysis that problematizes the limits
between thought and emotion, the book and the body, and an individual’s bibliography and
biography. The final manuscript will be comprised of an introduction and four chapters: Chapter 1
“Bibliography as Biography,” Chapter 2 “Systems and Desires,” Chapter 3 “Autobiography as
Ruptured Narratives,” and Chapter 4 “From the Body to the Book.” My leave enabled me to
undertake substantial research for these chapters and to write drafts of several chapter sections.
Also, I wrote and published “Conjuring Bodies: Kofman’s Lesson on Death” (Jan. 2011), which forms
the basis for the book’s final chapter. I was invited by Mauro Senatore to contribute this piece to a
special issue of the British journal Parallax, a respected interdisciplinary journal that features work
in Continental philosophy, critical theory, and cultural studies. My article was selected by the editor
to open the special issue.
I also developed several new projects (unrelated to the aforementioned book manuscripts), which
were presented as refereed conference papers at the following society meetings: Canadian Society
for Women in Philosophy (held in Montreal), “Freud After Derrida” Conference (held at University
of Manitoba), philoSOPHIA: A Feminist Society (held at Vanderbilt University), and Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (held in Montreal).