Invagination (philosophy)

{{short description|Term in philosophy to explain a special kind of metanarrative}}

In continental philosophy, the term invagination is used to explain a special kind of metanarrative. It was first used by Maurice Merleau-Ponty{{cite book|last=Merleau-Ponty|first=Maurice|title=The Visible and the Invisible|year=1968|publisher=Northwestern University Press|location=Evanston, IL|isbn=0810104571|page=152}} ({{langx|fr|invagination}}) to describe the dynamic self-differentiation of the 'flesh'. It was later used by Rosalind E. Krauss and Jacques Derrida ("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".{{cite book|last=Chaplin|first=Susan|title=Law, Sensibility, and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Women's Fiction: Speaking of Dread|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOqNqq4i2ioC&pg=PA23|accessdate=12 January 2013|year=2004|publisher=Ashgate|isbn=9780754633068|page=23}} He applies the term to such texts as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and Maurice Blanchot's La Folie du Jour.{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Amelia|title=The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E5zCts8ax58C&pg=PA200|accessdate=12 January 2013|year=2003|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=9780415267069|page=200}} 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.{{cite book|last=Wortham|first=Simon Morgan|title=The Derrida Dictionary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PVtjXOyPSMAC&pg=PA76|accessdate=12 January 2013|year=2010|publisher=Continuum International|isbn=9781847065261|page=76}}