Deconstruct Those Fangs, That Zipper

In 1990, French philosopher Jacques Derrida — father of deconstructionism, love it or loathe it — signed a three-paragraph document pledging to donate his archives to the University of California at Irvine, where he taught. “However, shortly before his death in 2004, the pipe-puffing philosopher changed his tune,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Derrida threatened to torpedo the archive agreement unless school officials halted their investigation into a Russian studies professor accused of sexually harassing a female grad student.” Wow. “In November, UCI sued Derrida's estate in federal court, a move that infuriated his admirers at the school and beyond. After a small faculty protest, UCI promised to drop the lawsuit and resume negotiations with Derrida's widow over a final resting place for his scholarly papers,” the Times reports. “... But a settlement has proved elusive.

At the heart of the impasse are a Florida vampire expert” and the three-paragraph document which concerns “the professor, Dragan Kujundzic, who taught a popular class on vampires and signed his e-mails with a colon to symbolize Dracula bite marks.” After the allegations of sexual misonduct, Kujundzic “was demoted, banished from campus without pay for two quarters and ordered to enroll in sexual harassment counseling. Although a school probe concluded that Kujundzic's four encounters with the woman were consensual, it said he nevertheless had violated a university policy that bars faculty members from dating students they supervise. The student, who said she felt coerced to have sex because of Kujundzic's influence over her academic career, then sued him and the university, a case that was recently settled out of court for $100,000 — of which $20,000 came from Kujundzic's pocket. Kujundzic left Irvine in 2005 for a job at the University of Florida. But he continues to be a stumbling block in UCI's bid for control of Derrida's archives.

Derrida's widow, Marguerite, has steadfastly refused to relinquish her husband's papers to the university, citing the case. She has said UCI can keep the extensive Derrida collection it already has, but the rest of his papers would go to the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France. In February, after UCI promised to drop its lawsuit against Derrida's widow and sons, the school began negotiating to obtain photocopies of his remaining papers. But UCI's predicted quick resolution has failed to materialize—and the lawsuit is still on the books.... Derrida's widow, who lives in France, didn't respond to a Times request for comment.”

Kujundzic is the author of The Returns of History: Russian Nietzscheans After Modernity, described at Amazon.com thusly: “The author's close readings and competent incorporation of critical literature paradigmatically exemplify the truth of how precisely indeed literature 'reflects' the life of human societies; equally importantly, they also show that literature reveals its secrets only to the gaze of astute and alert readers. Together with a thorough knowledge and pertinent application of the scholarship in the field, and with frequent flashes of revealing insights and suggestive connections, close readings constitute the book's most consistently outstanding aspect, giving it increasingly more depth and dimension.”