Rurality, Class and Whiteness in U.S. Dominant Discourse and Counter-Narrative
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The Literary and the Social
LIVING BOOKS ABOUT HISTORY ANTHONY GLINOER THE LITERARY AND THE SOCIAL Introduction If there is one thing that those who have taken a retrospective look at the relationships between the literary and the social agree on, it is the difficulty of their task: everyone insists on instability, fragmentation, the impossible synthesis. No appellation has succeeded in becoming the authority. While the expression most commonly used is “the sociology of literature,” over the last half-century it finds itself competing with a number of other terms, some of which are specific to one or two authors, and others adopted by research groups and university program courses: sociology of the text, literary sociology, sociocriticism, sociopoetics. In Germany, literatursoziologie collides with the soziologie der Literatur. In Italian, one speaks of sociologie letteraria or of letterature sociologica. Beyond the terminology, there is unity neither among groups of specialists (literary scholars, historians, sociologists, communications researchers), nor in the objects themselves (fiction, texts, discourses, practices, actors, social conditions of production and reception, mediations) nor in the methods (textual analysis, historical narrative, quantitative study, theoretical development). There have been many who, in order to augment the latter, have juxtaposed a sociology of facts and of literary practices with a “textual social hermeneutic” (Popovic, 2011). There are just as many who consider this opposition to be artificial and excessive, preferring to study mediations between texts and contexts. Hence, the panoramic nature of syntheses on the sociology of literature. To mention only two of the most recent: in French, Gisèle Sapiro (2014) organises her book along communication axes (from the production of works up to their reception) while Paul Aron and Alain Viala (2006) structure their “Que sais-je?” according 1 to major orientations (sociology of content, forms and practices). -
The Ideologies of Theory
THE IDEOLOGIES OF THEORY THE IDEOLOGIES OF THEORY ◆ FREDRIC JAMESON London · New York This edition first published by Verso 2008 Copyright © Fredric Jameson 2008 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 13579108642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG USA: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-277-6 (pbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-276-9 (hbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Garamond by WestKey Ltd, Falmouth, Cornwall Printed in the USA by Maple Vail An die Nachgeborenen: Seth, Anne, Justin, Jenny, Cassie, Stacy, Cade, Charlotte Contents Introduction ix PART I. SITUATIONS OF THEORY 1 Metacommentary 5 2 The Ideology of the Text 20 3 Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan 77 4 Criticism in History 125 5 Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analysis 144 6 Figural Relativism; or, The Poetics of Historiography 161 7 Modernism and Its Repressed; or, Robbe-Grillet as Anti- 175 Colonialist 8 Morality Versus Ethical Substance; or, Aristotelian Marxism in 189 Alasdair MacIntyre 9 On Negt and Kluge 194 10 Benjamin’s Readings 222 11 Foreword to Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition 243 12 Foreword to Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music 256 13 The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin’s Sociological Predecessor 264 14 How Not to Historicize Theory 286 PART II. -
1 Intertextuality
1 Intertextuality If Kristeva is openly acknowledged for coining the term intertextu- ality in the late 1960s, this recognition is surprisingly fleeting and dismissive.1 However supportive critics may be of its semiotics con- texts, they glide rapidly over Kristeva’s term, to concentrate on its more illustrious theorists such as Barthes.2 Indeed it was he, not Kristeva, who wrote the definition for intertextuality in the Encyclopédie universalis in 1973. In arenas outside semiotics, critics of intertextuality also relegate Kristeva’s contribution and its French contexts, but as derivative of the work of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle.3 A notable exception is provided by Worton and Still (1990), who focus extensively in their introduction on Kristeva’s part in a French high-cultural, avant-garde and intellectual tradition that com- bined experimental writing, literary theory, Saussurian linguistics and left-wing politics. By placing Kristeva firmly within the French critical and intellectual elite of Tel Quel, however, they separate her brand of intertextuality, as specifically highbrow, from similar modes of cultural borrowing practised by popular culture. Film and popular music had quickly adopted recycling and sampling in distinctly non- French, and non-theoretical, ways.4 While these critical snapshots of Kristevan intertextuality focus on very different issues, they have all contributed to one outcome, marginalization of Kristeva’s contribu- tions to the ‘real’ work and texts on intertextuality: Kristeva’s first published work in France is on Mikhail Bakhtin’s lit- erary writings, Roland Barthes’ seminar is the place where this first substantial part of the Kristevan oeuvre would be presented. -
6722 Poetics Today / 23:3 / Sheet 3 of 214
Introduction to the Study of Doxa Ruth Amossy French and Poetics and Comparative Literature, Tel Aviv 6722 Poetics Today / 23:3 / sheet 3 of 214 Inherited from ancient Greece, the notion of doxa as common knowledge and shared opinions haunts all contemporary disciplines that put commu- nication and social interaction at the center of their concerns. To be sure, the specific term is not always used: doxa appears under various guises, such as public opinion, verisimilitude, commonsense knowledge, commonplace, idée reçue, stereotype, cliché. Broadly speaking, however, all that is consid- ered true, or at least probable, by a majority of people endowed with reason, or by a specific social group, can be called doxic. Whether the Greek term is explicitly mentioned or not, the functions of doxa in social life and in ver- bal exchanges have been the subject of continuous inquiries, if not of sharp polemics, for the two last centuries. In this domain, francophone literary and linguistic theories, from Gus- tave Flaubert’s studies to Oswald Ducrot’s pragmatics and to Chaïm Perel- man’s ‘‘new rhetoric,’’ offer important insights.They seem to have explored the question in two main directions. The first, rooted in the modern con- sciousness of banality, carries to a paradoxical extreme the obsession with accepted ideas, trite expressions, and (bourgeois) stupidity. In this perspec- tive, doxa is a major obstacle to individual thinking and creativity as well as to genuine communication; as such, it constitutes a source of alienation. This approach is masterfully exemplified by Roland Barthes’s essays, widely drawing on Flaubert’s heritage. -
Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History
01.barsky 11/10/04 12:08 PM Page 163 Robert F.Barsky Introduction: Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History It’s fashionable to suggest that the social sciences and the humanities are undergoing a “crisis,”or that the new millennium, the New World Order, or some other grand force has led us, or should lead us, to reevaluate our presuppositions about the work undertaken in the do- mains of which they are composed. Even a brief glimpse into the lit- erary,historical, and cultural theories of past eras suggests that, in fact, each moment of history was rife with tensions and discord that threat- ened to challenge in fundamental ways prevailing dogmas of a given culture or a particular discipline. It’s perhaps more fruitful to suggest that the present moment, like moments that preceded it, is dominated by a series of assumptions, questions, and approaches tied to a finite set of theories, and associated with a small number of theorists who for some reason not necessarily related to quality or importance have risen to the top of an exceptionally rich mixture of work undertaken inside of, and beyond, the academy.The goal of this issue on Marc Angenot is to give the mixture a shake, to call up from its vast multiplicity of writings a corpus of work which, on account of its ambition, its depth, and its implications, deserves a more prominent place in the fields of criticism, history,and language studies, for a range of reasons. Consistent with other leading foreign-born figures who have risen to prominence in the realms of theory and criticism in the United States, including Eric Auerbach, Mikhaïl Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Ferdinand de Saussure, and René Wellek, Marc Angenot had a classical and rigorous educa- tion, in his case in philosophy,rhetoric, literature, and, crucially,philol- ogy, which, along with his great erudition and original approach to language studies, history, and literature, should put him in the com- pany of those who are most cited on the critical scene.