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Doktori (Ph.D.) Értekezés After De Man: Transformations of Deconstruction

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Doktori (Ph.D.) Értekezés After De Man: Transformations of Deconstruction Doktori (Ph.D.) értekezés After de Man: Transformations of Deconstruction in Contemporary Literary Theory Somogyi Gyula Supervisors: Dr. Bényei Tamás Dr. Kalmár György Debreceni Egyetem BTK 2011 AFTER DE MAN : TRANSFORMATIONS OF DECONSTRUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY Értekezés a doktori (Ph.D.) fokozat megszerzése érdekében az Irodalomtudományok tudományágban Írta: Somogyi Gyula okleveles magyar nyelv és irodalom – angol nyelv és irodalom szakos tanár Készült a Debreceni Egyetem Irodalomtudományi doktori iskolája (Angol-amerikai irodalomtudományi programja) keretében Témavezet ő: Dr. Bényei Tamás (olvasható aláírás) Dr. Kalmár György (olvasható aláírás) A doktori szigorlati bizottság: elnök: Dr. ………………………… tagok: Dr. ………………………… Dr. ………………………… A doktori szigorlat id őpontja: 200… . ……………… … . Az értekezés bírálói: Dr. ........................................... Dr. …………………………… Dr. ........................................... A bírálóbizottság: elnök: Dr. ........................................... tagok: Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. A nyilvános vita id őpontja: 200… . ……………… … . 2 „Én Somogyi Gyula teljes felel ősségem tudatában kijelentem, hogy a benyújtott értekezés a szerzõi jog nemzetközi normáinak tiszteletben tartásával készült. Jelen értekezést korábban más intézményben nem nyújtottam be és azt nem utasították el.” 3 Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................5 Chapter I. Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis ........................................................................14 Psychoanalysis and Rhetorical Reading: Felman, Lacan, de Man............................................14 “Er lasst sich nicht lesen”: The Unreadable in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd”...31 Chapter II. Deconstruction and Feminism ...............................................................................51 Bonds of Reading: Deconstruction and Feminism in Shoshana Felman’s oeuvre....................51 “The Space In Between”: Barbara Johnson’s Dislocations of Feminism and Deconstruction .65 Giving Life, Giving Death: Poe and the Aporias of “The Most Poetical Topic”......................82 Chapter III. Deconstruction and Trauma Theory ...................................................................98 Between Deconstruction and Ethics: The Concept of the Literary in Trauma Theory.............98 The Return of History in Felman, Johnson and Caruth...........................................................113 Feminism and Trauma Theory: Felman’s What Does a Woman Want? and Testimony .........129 Representing the Trauma of Parting: Mourning Emerson’s “Hyacinthine Boy”....................136 Trauma and Its Literary Examples: Tasso, Freud, Caruth.......................................................159 Chapter IV. Deconstruction and Legal Theory ......................................................................181 Deconstruction, Law and Literature ........................................................................................181 “An Irreparable Loss to Literature”: Law and Literature in Melville’s “Bartleby” ................205 Conclusions: Between Theory and History .............................................................................220 Abstract of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................223 A Disszertáció magyar nyelvű összefoglalója ..........................................................................224 Works Cited and Consulted .....................................................................................................225 List of Publications of the Author ............................................................................................244 4 INTRODUCTION AFTER DE MAN : TRANSFORMATIONS OF DECONSTRUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY “I had a feeling that the interpretation of this part of the dream was not carried far enough to make it possible to follow the whole of its concealed meaning. If I had pursued my comparion between these three women, it would have taken me far afield.” (Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams ) The title of the dissertation deliberately evokes the brief, yet all the more revealing closing chapter of Martin McQuillan’s monograph about Paul de Man’s contributions to literary theory and critical thinking. In this chapter, McQuillan delineates three possible interpretations of the word “after”: coming after de Man in a historical sense; influenced by de Man’s way of thinking; and “going in search of” the meaning of de Man’s texts” (McQuillan 113-114). My dissertation proposes to analyze the ramifications of all these three aspects of “after,” what it means to “come after” de Man, whose texts now seem unavoidable for critics dealing with contemporary literary theory. He had a considerable impact on the ongoing theoretical debates about literature, philosophy, rhetoric, textuality and even history. Many think that the most important significance of his oeuvre lies in pointing out how the ambivalent structures of rhetoric operate in every act of language, not only in literary texts. However, as there are many excellent monographs written about the topic, the dissertation does not want to give an extensive analysis of de Man’s texts, instead it wants to read different theoretical texts driven by the aim of inflecting rhetorical deconstruction with other trends in contemporary literary theory, for instance psychoanalysis, feminism, trauma-, or legal studies. I am convinced that these encounters can be best examined in the texts of some of de Man’s former colleagues and students: Shoshana Felman, Barbara Johnson and Cathy Caruth. All of these thinkers demonstrate different paths of how we can reread de Man’s notion of rhetoric, all of their texts are trying inventively to transform his approach with other fields and discourses. In other words, much like in Sigmund Freud’s famous “Irma Dream,” three women are in the focus of the dissertation, the comparison (and difference) between these threm constitutes my field of inquiry. Tracing the kinds of permutations de Man’s strain of deconstruction went through in these texts, the dissertation revolves around the encounter of four different theoretical and 5 critical discourses: deconstruction and psychoanalysis, deconstruction and feminism, deconstruction and trauma studies, deconstruction and legal studies. My thesis is that through certain crucial notions, all of these thinkers are trying to create a dialogue between different theoretical positions that, as Johnson suggests, “remain skeptical of each other” (Johnson World 4). Their rethinking of transference, female desire, the figure of apostrophe, the notion of trauma and justice can all be read as examples of this effort. The dissertation also aims to show that these “hybrid” discourses (I am using Homi K. Bhabha’s term here) are not mere revisions (that is, corrections) of de Man’s theory of language and rhetoric, but different ways of explicating and interrogating certain key notions and problems within deconstruction. My use of the term “deconstruction” in the title and throughout the dissertation might be slightly misleading. It could suggest that the thesis treats deconstruction as a unified set of theories about philosophy, rhetoric or literature, in this way reducing the various differences between philosophers and critics associated with this movement. It could even evoke an expectation that Jacques Derrida’s texts will also be kept in the foreground, only to fail to keep such a promise. It should be better named, following Jeffrey Nealon and Robert Eaglestone, “deconstructive criticism,” which they use to name “The acts of deconstruction characteristic of [J. Hillis] Miller and Paul de Man” (Eaglestone 65, cf. Nealon 1268), thus when I write “deconstruction” it is to be understood as a shorthand for “deconstructive criticism,” narrowed mostly to de Man’s “rhetorical deconstructive criticism.” This clearly indicates that the dissertation would only like to formulate valid claims about the afterlife of this branch of deconstruction, and at least partly explains why I had to leave out an extensive treatment of Derrida’s oeuvre, whose fields of interest since de Man’s death often overlapped with the three critics studied in the dissertation. After recognizing such a plurality within deconstruction itself, we must also note that the relationship of deconstructive criticism to each of these other discourses is rather different, and is not without peculiar controversies and fundamental disagreements. Thus, the dialogue that is going on in the texts I am going to analyze always presupposes an interpretive effort. Sometimes de Man’s texts and notions lend themselves more easily to these encounters, establishing this dialogue sometimes requires a more dynamic approach. For example, ever since Jacques Lacan’s “linguistic” contribution to psychoanalysis, the discourses of psychoanalysis and deconstructive criticism can be brought to the final denominator of language and rhetoric, regardless of how different their views about language may be. However, in the case of feminism and deconstruction, there seems to be a more essential disagreement about the notion of the subject, language, and politics. Despite the obvious points of controversy and disagreement, throughout the dissertation I will point out how these 6 different theoretical/critical
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