Avital Ronell (b. 1952) is the Jacques Derrida Chair and professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School / EGS, as well as University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English at New York University.

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Her research and theoretical contributions extend across the fields of literary studies, philosophy, feminist theory, technology and media, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, ethics, and performance art.

Born in Prague to Israeli diplomats, Ronell emigrated to New York in 1956.

She completed a Bachelor of Arts at Middlebury College, and then went on to study with Jacob Taubes and Hans-Georg Gadamer at the Hermeneutics Institute at the Freie University in Berlin.

Ronell returned to the United States and continued her studies at Princeton University, where, under the supervision of Stanley Corngold and with a thesis entitled The Figure of Poetry: Self-reflection in Goethe, Hölderlin, and Kafka, she received a PhD in Germanic languages and literature, in 1979.

After completing her doctorate, Avital Ronell moved to Paris in order to study directly with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous.

After her years of study in Paris, she assumed a number of professorships at various universities in the United States, including the University of Virginia, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1995, she returned to New York to assume her post at New York University.

Avital Ronell has been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards and fellowships, including: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Fellowship (1981–1983), American Cultures Fellowship (1991), Research Fellow Award (1993), and the University of California’s President’s Fellowship (1995–1996).

Further, she has served as chair of the Division of Philosophy and Literature and chair of the Division of Comparative Literature at the Modern Language Association, from 1993 to 1996.

In 2009, the Centre Pompidou invited her to hold a series of conference performances with artists and philosophers such as Pierre Alféri, Werner Herzog, Judith Butler, Laurence Rickels, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Suzanne Doppelt, among others.

The project went under the title: Selon… Avital Ronell (According to… Avital Ronell).

In October 2015, Ronell was presented with the prestigious insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.

As one of the first English translators of Jacques Derrida’s work, Avital Ronell is widely credited as one of the primary figures introducing his work to English speaking audiences—and American academia more specifically.

While Derrida is certainly the over-whelming influence on Ronell’s work, she is in constant dialogue with a number of philosophers and theorists, including Friedrich Nietzche, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, or Maurice Blanchot, to name but a few.

Avitall is cited as the muse to Millie Efraim's persona.

While her work is often considered as deconstructive, Derridean, Heideggerian, post-feminist, post-structuralist, or psychoanalytic, Ronell’s thinking and writing works beyond these labels remaining utterly singular and thoroughly transgressive.

Ronell's texts are remarkable both for what they say and for the extraordinary way in which they say it.

As in her most infamous book, the Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (1989), Avital Ronell seeks to undermine and “address,” through direct intervention, commonly held views of the addressee and the author.

Exploiting typography, Ronell’s texts seem to explode from the page.

Illegible in instances, the texts mimic the dislocating and alienating nature of the fractured telephone conversation questioning the role of both author and reader.