Dr. Benedetta Zaccarello

Benedetta Zaccarello, research fellow at the CNRS, France, works on contemporary philosophy through the study of manuscript documents and archives, with the aim of understanding the role played by writing in processes of conceptual creation.

She coordinated the international research network (IRN) “AITIA – Archives of International Theory: an Intercultural Approach,” funded by the InSHS of the CNRS (2020–2024) and bringing together European and Indian research centres and archives.

She participated in the thirteen-volume edition of Paul Valéry's Cahiers 1894–1914 for Gallimard. In addition to numerous articles, she has devoted the following works to the same author: “Piccoli poemi astratti”: i Cahiers come progetto filosofico, Verona, Fiorini Edizioni, 2010, 149 pp.; Du divin et des dieux: Recherches sur le Peri ton tou theou de Paul Valéry (Peter Lang, “Rostocker Romanistische Arbeiten” series, 2013, in collaboration with Franz Johansson and Fabienne Mérel); “Paul Valéry: strategie del sensibile,” Aisthesis, no. 1/2012 (in collaboration with Jean-Michel Rey and Fabrizio Desideri); and Puissances et possibilités d'une île. Études sur un projet dramatique inédit de Paul Valéry: L'Isle sans nom (Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2017, in collaboration with Franz Johansson).

She has also edited and annotated an unpublished lecture course by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Collège de France (Recherches sur l'usage littéraire du langage, MetisPresses, Geneva, 2013) and is preparing the edition of an unpublished screenplay by Marguerite Duras, La Chaise Longue.

She was seconded to the CEFRES (USR 3138 CNRS-MEAE, 2016–2020), where she worked on questions of interculturality in theoretical manuscripts, drawing in particular on two exemplary cases: the archives of the Indian anglophone philosopher Aurobindo Ghose and the French papers of the Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka.

She has also edited a collective volume on philosophical manuscripts and the methodological challenges they pose to researchers: Reading Philosophy through Archives and Manuscripts.

She has taught contemporary philosophy and aesthetics at the universities of Venice (IUAV), Fez (Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah), and Prague (Charles University), and participates in the teaching of textual genetics at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris.