continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...

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

metanarrative In social theory, a metanarrative (also master narrative, or meta-narrative and grand narrative; or ) is an overarching narrative about smaller historical narratives, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (a ...

. 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 interes ...

() to describe the dynamic self-differentiation of the 'flesh'. It was later used by Rosalind E. Krauss and

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

("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 (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

's ''

Critique of Judgment The ''Critique of Judgment'' (), 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 of Judgment'' follows the ''Crit ...

'' 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 pos ...

's ''La Folie du Jour''. Invagination is an aspect of différance, since according to Derrida it opens the "inside" to the "other" and denies both inside and outside a stable identity.

References

{{philo-concept-stub Deconstruction Literary concepts Jacques Derrida