DOCSLIB.ORG

De Man, That Dangerous Supplement

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
De Man, That Dangerous Supplement De Man, That Dangerous Supplement Ziatan Filipovic A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY English and Comparative Literature Goldsmiths, University of London London,2009 Copyright © Zlatan Filipovic, 2009. 3 Abstract To ask whether Paul de Man still matters is perhaps to have already answered the question. De Man's work, as 1. Hillis Miller writes in a telling irony, "is a violent allergen that provokes fits of coughing, sneezing, and burning eyes, perhaps even worse symptoms, unless it can be neutralized or expelled." There is something inherently resistant in de Man then that goes beyond his wartime journalism. Dust having settled, one must have good reasons today to whip it up and risk another reactive fit. Yet it is precisely this resistance in de Man that will pivot the movement ofthis thesis, as it sneezes and coughs along the way. Relayed through the allergen of terms like deconstruction, unreadability, rhetoric, it will come to remark a trace of something inappropriable, inhuman in texts, which persistently stalks our attempts to be rid of it. It articulates a crisis in the empire of cognition and a disruption of epistemo-aesthetic ideologies that inform our thinking of the political. The thesis plots a narrative that interrogates the relation between the rhetorical, the inhuman and the political, which in de Man comes to activate a new exigency of reading, constantly overtasking received epistemic regimes that integrate dissention to open a passage for the new ones to emerge. What is consistently traced is the measured emptying out of ontology and psychologism from language and its opening to unmasterable linguistic agencies. This general freeing of latency in structural closures that de Man's reading always teases out not only unsettles their epistemic reliability but also calls for a permanent assault on the authoritative grounding of their legitimacy. What shocks in de Man's work, provoking systemic fits, is a kind of permanent revolution to which his writing is committed. 4 Contents PREFACE 6 INTRODUCTION: DISFIGURING DE MAN 13 DE MAN, THAT DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENT 43 OF THE ORIGINAL POLEMIC: PHILOSOPHY'S FLOWERS 63 TOWARDS A TEMPORAL POETICS: RISS DES GRUNDES 91 HEGELIAN WITHOUT RESERVE 96 ON THE SECOND SLOPE: BLANCHOT AND DE MAN 119 THE WIDOWED WORD: MALLARME AND DE MAN 141 READING CON: RHETORIC, ALLEGORY AND THE MACHINE 178 ALLEGORY'S CONTRESENS: "To BRUSH HISTORY AGAINST THE GRAIN" 190 THE MACHINE 230 POLITICS DE TROP 255 SPACE ENGINEERS 264 HUMAN RELAPSES, INHUMAN EVENTS 279 BIBLIOGRAPHY 308 PRIMARY SOURCES: 308 SECONDARY SOURCES: 313 5 Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in anyone total view of the world. Fascination of the opposing point of view: refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic. -- Nietzsche, The Will to Power 6 Preface Because reading is always reading otherwise, no two repetitions of the book are the same. Preface, writes Gayatri Spivak, comes to "commemorate that difference in identity by inserting itself between two readings - in our case, my reading (given of course that my language and I are shifting and unstable), my rereading, my rearranging of the text - and your reading.") The preface, then, would be the site of a certain unreadability of the "book," a placeholder for its scattered repetitions and its disinscription by reading. Indeed, "[t]he preface, by daring to repeat the book and reconstitute it in another register, merely enacts what is already the case: the book's repetitions are always other than the book. There is, in fact, no 'book' other than these ever-different repetitions: the 'book' in other words, is always already a 'text,' constituted by the play of identity and difference" (xii). Writing prefatory remarks to the text is subject to the same general law of reading. It does not bind the "book" but perforates it yet again. Itself a text, preface would have to be pre-prefaced in tum by the general laws of its own expository reading. There can be no end to prefacing. And, indeed, the text prefaced is nothing other but a preface to another text that comes to displace it in misreading. It is a question of a certain resistance of reading that syncopates the "book" by shedding it in textual displacements. One never knows whether one writes a preface to the book or a book to the preface. I Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Translator's Preface." Preface to Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins UP, 1997), p. xii. 7 Prefacing is an "essential," yet "ludicrous operation," Jacques Derrida writes. Not "only because such an operation would confine itself to discursive effects of an intention-to-mean, but because, in pointing out a single thematic nucleus or a single guiding thesis, it would cancel out the textual displacement that is at work 'here. ",2 That is at work everywhere where there is reading, and, in particular, reading of Paul de Man. For reading, in de Man, is what always double backs on its own statement and disaffirms it in a permanent shedding of thematic closures. It initiates, one could say, an unrelieved pledge to the other to whom reading is owed. To preface thematic pivot points or a topological relief that would account for the curvatures of de Man's writing would be precisely an attempt to domesticate the alterity of his texts that testify to a challenge and a profound resource of a certain resistance that prevents all reading from reifying into positive, exploitative truths. Indeed, as Derrida writes, "if such a thing were justifiable, we would have to assert right now that one of the theses ... inscribed within dissemination is precisely the impossibility of reducing a text as such to its effects of meaning, content, thesis, or theme. Not the impossibility, perhaps ... but the resistance - we shall call it the restance [that is, some other, atopos, always left unappropriated] - of a sort of writing that can neither adapt nor adopt such a reduction" ("Outwork," 7-8). What the text will have shown is the impossibility of prefacing its eventfulness and uncertainty that is also a resource of reading. "Hence," Derrida continues, "this is not a preface, at least not ifby preface we mean a table, a code, an annotated summery of prominent signifieds, or an index of key words or of proper names" (8). This preface is then more of a 2 Jacques Derrida, "Outwork," in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), p. 7. 8 retractive rent present in every reading that in providing "key terms" also, and by the same token, opens itself to a fund of repressed energies and discontinued possibilities that belong to de Man's text and disrupt all possibilities of its totalisation, keeping the "book" unwritten along its margins. It proceeds with no finality in view and, indeed, in most general terms possible. What it sets forth is a trajectory of a certain reading resistance in de Man that will come to empty the referential fiat of language and mount an assault on cognitive orders, keeping open the possibility of disruption as the very eventfulness of reading and a chance for politics. There is something impossible, indeed inhuman, in reading, an exigency that with a force of compulsion overtasks all possibility. But what one essentially does here is a conferring of masks or faces (prosopon poien) on a writing that has none in order to make it readable, to make it speak. Prosopopeia, however, as de Man has shown, defaces to the exact extent that it restores. It recalls the substitutivity and exteriority of the face that accounts for the possibility of reading. One always makes the text say more or less than it does and risks being struck dumb on what matters. But this is the essential risk of reading. The introductory chapter will consider and address the critical reception of de Man's writing, its immediate implications for our reading of literature, and what appears to have caused a certain topological concern within deconstruction, its crisis. This crisis is motivated not only by specific institutional and disciplinary needs, a guardrail against the entire register of irresponsibility and political apathy de Man's writing seems to solicit, but by an underlying opposition between literature and philosophy and its systematic disarticulation in 9 de Man, as a certain pressure or exigency of reading to account for the irreducible rhetoricity of philosophical concepts. What is put in question towards the end, however, is the possibility of anything like a topological margin that would presuppose a rigorous demarcation of meaning of deconstruction. There is nothing to signal the epoch of its meaning. This opens to the next chapter where the possibility of deconstruction, that in de Man seems to have lost its initiative and its ethico-political exigency, is made to hinge precisely on a certain impossibility of its margins. There is, perhaps, deconstruction only there where it is not, cannot be owned, attested to in its presence, nor secured against the invaginations that constitute it. De Man, that dangerous supplement, a marginal presence, is shown to be an irreducible presence of a margin inside deconstruction. In terms of its philosophical topoi that would come to carve out the property of deconstruction from the travesty of its rhetorical and literary perversions, deconstruction only affirms the very possibility of incursion of the literary. If there are borders between literature and philosophy, deconstruction is the borderline constituting their difference. Neither proper nor improper, it constitutes, and essentially limits, the very possibility of property. De Man can no longer be consigned to the margins in terms of this opposition because deconstruction is both traced by and is a tracing of the margin constitutive of all concepts.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • (De)Constructing Boundaries
    21st Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Conference (DE)CONSTRUCTING BOUNDARIES 9-10 February, 2018 21st Annual Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Conference (DE)CONSTRUCTING BOUNDARIES CGIS South, Harvard University 9-10 February, 2018 Abstract Booklet 1 Table of Contents Welcome Note 3 Sponsors 4 Keynote Speakers 5 Campus Map 6 Harvard Guest Wi-fi access 6 Panel Information 7 Panel A: (De)constructing Nation: Gendered Bodies in the Making of Modern Korea 7 Panel B: Urban Fabrics Unraveled 9 Panel C: Reimagining the boundary of novelistic styles in Pre-modern East Asia 10 Panel D: Transmission and Displacement in Literature 12 Panel E: Reframing Regionalism in East Asia 14 Panel F: Art and Visual Culture in Context 16 Panel G: Traversing Boundaries in Education 18 Panel H: Transnationalism in the Age of Empire 20 Panel I: Re-examining Boundaries in Chinese Politics in Xi Jinping's "New Era" 23 Panel K: Media Across Boundaries 28 Panel L: De(constructing) Myths of Migration 29 2 Welcome Note Welcome to the 21st annual Harvard East Asia Society Conference! It is our privilege to host graduate students working across all disciplines to exchange ideas and discuss their research related to Asia. In addition to receiving feedback from their peers and leading academics, participants have the opportunity to meet others doing similar research and forge new professional relationships. This year’s theme, “(De)constructing Boundaries”, critically assesses boundaries - physical, national, cultural, spatial, temporal, and disciplinary - between different spatial- temporal areas of study. As the concept of “Asia” continues to evolve, the construction and deconstruction of boundaries will enable redefinitions of collective knowledge, culture, and identity.
    [Show full text]
  • Qualitative Freedom
    Claus Dierksmeier Qualitative Freedom - Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility Translated by Richard Fincham Qualitative Freedom - Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility Claus Dierksmeier Qualitative Freedom - Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility Claus Dierksmeier Institute of Political Science University of Tübingen Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Translated by Richard Fincham American University in Cairo New Cairo, Egypt Published in German by Published by Transcript Qualitative Freiheit – Selbstbestimmung in weltbürgerlicher Verantwortung, 2016. ISBN 978-3-030-04722-1 ISBN 978-3-030-04723-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04723-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964905 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
    [Show full text]
  • Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich Max Schiller Claremont Mckenna College
    Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2012 Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich Max Schiller Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Schiller, Max, "Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich" (2012). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 358. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/358 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Introduction The formation and subsequent actions of the Nazi government left a devastating and indelible impact on Europe and the world. In the midst of general technological and social progress that has occurred in Europe since the Enlightenment, the Nazis represent one of the greatest social regressions that has occurred in the modern world. Despite the development of a generally more humanitarian and socially progressive conditions in the western world over the past several hundred years, the Nazis instigated one of the most diabolic and genocidal programs known to man. And they did so using modern technologies in an expression of what historian Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.” The idea, according to Herf is that, “Before and after the Nazi seizure of power, an important current within conservative and subsequently Nazi ideology was a reconciliation between the antimodernist, romantic, and irrantionalist ideas present in German nationalism and the most obvious manifestation of means ...modern technology.” 1 Nazi crimes were so extreme and barbaric precisely because they incorporated modern technologies into a process that violated modern ethical standards. Nazi crimes in the context of contemporary notions of ethics are almost inconceivable.
    [Show full text]
  • Depending on Evil an Analysis of Late Antique Christian Demonologies
    Depending on Evil An Analysis of Late Antique Christian Demonologies Thomas Andruszewski 2/17/2008 Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................................... i Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................1 Part I - In Support of Apocalypse Chapter I - Justin Martyr, Athenagoras and Tertullian................................................................................7 Chapter II - Origen .....................................................................................................................................23 Chapter III - Augustine of Hippo ................................................................................................................33 Part II - Demonizing Demons: the Construction of Evil in Late Antiquity Chapter IV - Taking Aim, the Role of Demons in the Polemical Arsenal of Early Church Fathers...........39 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................55 1 Preface This thesis provides an analysis of the demonologies included in the writings of some of the early Church Fathers. They include: Justin Martyr’s Apology (150 CE),1 Athenagoras’ Legatio (177 CE),2 Tertullian’s Apology (197 CE),3 Origen’s On First Principles (218 CE)4 and Against Celsus (248 CE),5
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of Alterity and Influence in the Literary and Philosophical Neighbourhood of Jean Genet and Emmanuel Levinas
    A study of alterity and influence in the literary and philosophical neighbourhood of Jean Genet and Emmanuel Levinas Thomas F. Newman University College London A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2008 UMI Number: U593B63 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U593363 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this PhD is my own. This thesis is the one on which I wish to be examined. Thomas F. Newman 29 January 2008 2 Thesis Abstract The dissertation is a chiasmic reading of the works of Jean Genet and Emmanuel Levinas, examining the way they each address the relation to the Other in terms of ethics and subjectivity. Whereas a straightforward association between the two writers might seem paradoxical because of the differences in their approaches and rhetoric, a chiasmic reading allows intricate approaches, moments of proximity and departures to be read both conceptually and aesthetically. We show that these two writers share a tightly-woven discursive neighbourhood, and examine that neighbourhood through detailed analysis of various textual encounters.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul De Man Papers MS.C.004
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6p30071t Online items available Guide to the Paul de Man papers MS.C.004 Finding aid prepared by Jeffrey Atteberry and updated by Laura Clark Brown, 1997; machine-readable finding aid created by Audrey Pearson; updated by Alexandra M. Bisio, 2015. Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries (cc) 2015 The UCI Libraries P.O. Box 19557 University of California, Irvine Irvine 92623-9557 [email protected] URL: http://special.lib.uci.edu Guide to the Paul de Man papers MS.C.004 1 MS.C.004 Contributing Institution: Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries Title: Paul de Man papers Creator: De Man, Paul Identifier/Call Number: MS.C.004 Physical Description: 11.8 Linear Feet(25 boxes) Date (inclusive): 1948-1999 Abstract: This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Paul de Man documenting his career as a scholar and literary theorist in the field of comparative literature, and as an academic in the United States. Files primarily contain his manuscripts and typescripts related to literary criticism, rhetoric, and critical theory, and reflect his general interests in Romanticism. In particular, materials document his approach to literary texts that became known as deconstruction. His works focus on writers and philosophers such as Hegel, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Yeats. The collection also contains published and unpublished writings, student papers, notes, teaching notebooks, and related materials. Language of Material: English . Access The collection is open for research. Access to student record material is restricted for 75 years from the latest date of the materials in those files.
    [Show full text]
  • Ingo Berensmeyer Literary Culture in Early Modern England, 1630–1700
    Ingo Berensmeyer Literary Culture in Early Modern England, 1630–1700 Ingo Berensmeyer Literary Culture in Early Modern England, 1630–1700 Angles of Contingency This book is a revised translation of “Angles of Contingency”: Literarische Kultur im England des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, originally published in German by Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007, as vol. 39 of the Anglia Book Series. ISBN 978-3-11-069130-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069137-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-069140-5 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110691375 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934495 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available from the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ©2020 Ingo Berensmeyer, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com. Cover image: Jan Davidszoon de Heem, Vanitas Still Life with Books, a Globe, a Skull, a Violin and a Fan, c. 1650. UtCon Collection/Alamy Stock Photo. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Preface to the Revised Edition This book was first published in German in 2007 as volume 39 of the Anglia Book Series. In returning to it for this English version, I decided not simply to translate but to revise it thoroughly in order to correct mistakes, bring it up to date, and make it a little more reader-friendly by discarding at least some of its Teutonic bag- gage.
    [Show full text]
  • Self and Other in Critical International Theory: Assimilation, Incommensurability and the Paradox of Critique*
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository 1 SELF AND OTHER IN CRITICAL INTERNATIONAL THEORY: ASSIMILATION, INCOMMENSURABILITY AND THE PARADOX OF CRITIQUE* Vassilios Paipais Paper accepted for publication in the REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES Abstract: This paper is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematic. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths, i.e. either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this paper understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique’s authority and function. Vassilios Paipais is a research student at the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science and an LSE100 Tutorial Fellow. He is currently co-Convenor of CRIPT, a BISA working group, and his interests include International Relations theory, political theory, international political theory, international ethics, strategic studies and military history. *I would like to thank George Papanicolaou, Felix Berenskoetter and two anonymous referees of this journal for their helpful and constructive criticism.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ethics of Disbelief: What Does New Atheism Mean for America? an Honors Thesis for the Department of Religion Marysa E. Shere
    The Ethics of Disbelief: What Does New Atheism Mean for America? An honors thesis for the Department of Religion Marysa E. Sheren Tufts University ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my deep gratitude to Laura Doane and the generous donors who make the Tufts Summer Scholars grant program possible, and to Professor Elizabeth Lemons, who served as my mentor throughout my completion of the program in the summer of 2011. That summer of research was the time during which this project first took root, and I am so grateful to those who have taken an interest and invested in my research on New Atheism. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Ethics of Disbelief: An Introduction....................................................................... 1-10 Chapters Chapter 1: THE “SECULAR” AND THE “RELIGIOUS”......................................... 11-29 Chapter 2: IS RELIGION INHERENTLY VIOLENT?.............................................. 30-51 Chapter 3: RELIGION, NEW ATHEISM AND AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE .......... 51-77 Looking Forward: A Conclusion .......................................................................................77 Bibliography .................................................................................................................iv-ix iii The Ethics of Disbelief: An Introduction Journalists have used the term “New Atheism” to describe a 21st-century movement spurred by the success of several non-fiction books. These books, authored by hard-line secularists and consumed by millions, have made a particularly large splash in the United States over the past five years, sparking a national public debate about God and religion. In this introductory segment of my paper, I will explain what distinguishes New Atheism from other kinds of atheism, and will identify the factors that have led the American public and mainstream media to interpret New Atheism as a “new” social and intellectual innovation.
    [Show full text]
  • Private Acts and Public Culture in Early Modern England Nicholas Mcdowell University of Exeter, [email protected]
    Criticism Volume 46 Article 8 Issue 2 When Is a Public Sphere 2004 Interpreting Communities: Private Acts and Public Culture in Early Modern England Nicholas Mcdowell University of Exeter, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Mcdowell, Nicholas (2004) "Interpreting Communities: Private Acts and Public Culture in Early Modern England," Criticism: Vol. 46: Iss. 2, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol46/iss2/8 07 rev-mcdowell (279-298) 10/27/04 11:28 AM Page 281 NICHOLAS MCDOWELL Interpreting Communities: Private Acts and Public Culture in Early Modern England Better a Shrew Than a Sheep: Women, Drama and the Culture of Jest in Early Mod- ern England by Pamela Allen Brown. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 263. $19.95 paper, $49.95 cloth. Increase and Multiply: Governing Cultural Reproduction in Early Modern England by David Glimp. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Pp. xxvii + 230. $21.95 paper, $60.95 cloth. Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England by Laura Gowing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. x + 260. $38.00 cloth. Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foun- dations of Western Society by Katherine A. Lynch. Cambridge Studies in Popu- lation, Economy and Society in Past Time 37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 250. $65.00 cloth. Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature by Jennifer Richards. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 212. $60.00 cloth. Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N.
    [Show full text]
  • (Partial) Michael Sprinker Bibliography
    A (Partial) Michael Sprinker Bibliography Books: 1. "Counterpoint of Dissonance": The Aesthetics and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. 2. Imaginary Relations: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Theory of Historical Materialism. London: Verso/NLB, 1987. 3. History and Ideology in Proust: ''A la recherche du temps perdu" and the Third French Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Edited Collections: 1. (with Mike Davis) Reshaping the U.S. Left. London: Verso/NLB, 1988. 2. (with Mike Davis, et al.) The Fire in the Hearth. London: Verso/NLB, 1990. 3. (with E. Ann Kaplan) Crosscurrents: Recent Trends in Humanities Research. London: Verso/NLB, 1990. 4. Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. 5. (with E. Ann KapIan) The Althusserian Legacy. London: Verso/NLB, 1993. 6. (with E. Ann Kaplan and Román de la Campa) Late Imperial Culture. London: Verso/NLB, 1995. 7. Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx." London: Verso/NLB, 1999. Articles and Essays: 1. "'The hoax that joke bilked': Comedy in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." Mosaic 10 (1976): 133-45. 2. "'The Intricate Evasions of As': Meredith's Theory of Figure." Victorian Newsletter 53 (Spring 1978): 9-12. 3. "Ruskin on the Imagination." Studies in Romanticism 18 (Spring 1979): 115-39. 4. "Gerard Manley Hopkins on the Origin of Language." Journal of the History of Ideas 41 (January-March 1980): 113-28. 5. "Fictions of the Self: The End of Autobiography," in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 6.
    [Show full text]
  • Postmodern Temptations
    Book Reviews Postmodern Temptations Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism,or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capital- ism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xxii, 438. $34.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). Robert Post Pereat mundus, fiat philosophia,fiat philosophus, fiam! Fredric Jameson has long been among our most sophisticated and influential cultural critics. Combining Marxism2 and structuralism, 3 Jameson's persistent effort has been to locate and fix the social dimen- sions of structural cultural patterns. In his most recent book, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson applies this perspective to the important phenomenon of postmodern- 1. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS (Francis Golflng trans., 1956) 243. 2. FREDRIC JAMESON, MARXISM AND FORM: TWENTIETH-CENTURY DIALECTICAL THEORIES OF LITERATURE (1971); FREDRIC JAMESON, LATE MARXISM: ADORNO, OR, THE PERSISTENCE OF THE DIALECTIC (1990). 3. FREDRIC JAMESON, THE PRISON-HOUSE OF LANGUAGE: A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF STRUCTURALISM AND RUSSIAN FORMALISM (1972). 4. FREDRIC JAMESON, THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS: NARRATIVE AS A SOCIALLY SYMBOLIC ACT (1981). Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol. 4, Iss. 2 [1992], Art. 9 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities [Vol. 4: 391 ism.5 The book ought to be required reading for the many legal academ- ics who have greeted the advent of postmodernism with unrestrained enthusiasm. Jameson, through close attention to the actual cultural manifestations of postmodernism, tells a far darker tale. Postmodernism, Jameson tells us, expresses "an inverted millenarian- ism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that."6 The postmodern condition defines itself through its interrogation of the great movements of the past, especially of modernism.
    [Show full text]