A researcher at CNRS, Benedetta Zaccarello works on contemporary philosophy through the study of its manuscripts and archives. Her research aims at understanding the role played by writing in the production of abstract discourse, analyzing author’s drafts as traces of thinking and composing practices while using the archival documents to situate concepts creation into an existential, historical and cultural background.
She has been teaching contemporary philosophy and aesthetics at the Universities of Fez (Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah), Venice (IUAV) and Prague (Charles University) and she currently teaches genetic criticism at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Her research activities cover manuscripts and archival materials by Paul Valéry, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jan Patočka, Marguerite Duras and Aurobindo Ghose.She has critically co-edited Paul Valéry, Cahiers 1894-1914 (Gallimard) and edited Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Recherches sur l’usagelittéraire du langage (MetisPresses, 2013).
In service at ITEM (UMR 8132, CNRS/ENS Paris), she coordinates its « Equipe Valéry » as well as the International Research Network AITIA – Archives of International Theory an Intercultural Approach – financed by CNRS (2020-2024) and federating ten research institutions across India and Europe.In collaboration with Kannan M. and the department of Social Sciences at IFP she has created a set of international conferences entitled “What is an archive in India and Europe?”