ITHACA, N.Y. -- A scholarly reflection on the legacy of the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida titled "Literature and Democracy" will be held April 15 to 16 on the Cornell University campus. It is free and open to the public. For a complete schedule and description see http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/french_studies/events/index.asp .

Hosted by the Cornell Program in French Studies, the symposium brings together nine outstanding scholars in the fields of literature and literary theory -- Derrida's happy hunting grounds.

"Their task will be to reflect on the significance of Derrida's work and legacy for scholarship in the humanities and, more generally, for the world at large," writes Philip Lewis, Cornell professor of Romance studies, in a brief description of the symposium. "The aim of the symposium is at once to honor and to affirm a project of intellectual and academic renewal for which Jacques Derrida was the exemplary advocate."

Derrida rose to prominence in the United States as progenitor of a method of literary analysis called deconstruction, an often misused and contentious term that by its very nature eludes easy definition.

In his book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1997), symposium speaker Jonathan Culler, the Cornell Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, offers this take on deconstruction:

"Deconstruction is most simply defined as a critique of the hierarchical oppositions that have structured Western thought … To deconstruct an opposition is to show that it is not natural and inevitable but a construction, produced by discourses that rely on it, and to show that it is a construction in a work of de construction that seeks to dismantle it and reinscribe it -- that is, not destroy it but give it a different structure and functioning."

Deconstruction is also a mode of reading, Culler explains in his text. However, a persistent motif in Derrida's writing about social and legal justice in particular, Lewis states, "is the linkage of democracy -- a concept and a political tradition to which Derrida held all the more firmly for having deconstructed them -- with literature or fiction, a mode of discourse that finds its principle in the European enlightenment of the 18th century. The democracy of literature lies in its determination and capacity to reassert in art the right to speak the truth unconditionally and publicly."

Early in Derrida's career, Lewis writes, the French philosopher often confronted claims, "which he patiently refuted," that his critiques of philosophy were apolitical and inattentive to ethical concerns. "But as his work developed into a corpus of more than 40 books, his attention to political, ethical, social and institutional issues became unmistakable. His positions of advocacy for human rights and social justice commanded international attention."

Lewis asserts that "the irrefrangible association of literature and democracy lies at the core of Jacques Derrida's effort to rearticulate the idea of the humanities and to rethink the aims and possibilities of the university as an institution."

With that in mind, the symposium will be held Friday in the A.D. White House and on Saturday in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. Friday's speakers include Culler and Richard Klein, professor of French literature. Anne Berger, Cornell professor of French studies, will preside. Timothy Murray, Cornell professor of English and comparative literature, will preside at Saturday's events.

Among guest presenters will be Henry Sussman, the Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo; David Wills, SUNY-Albany's jointly appointed professor of English and professor of languages, literatures and cultures; Geoffrey Bennington, the Asa G. Candler Professor of Modern French Thought at Emory University; Avital Ronell, professor of German, English and comparative literature at New York University; Samuel Weber, the Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University; Pheng Cheah, associate professor of rhetoric at the University of California-Berkeley; and Peggy Kamuf, the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French at the University of Southern California.