ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: LITERARY THEORY Volume 5 POST-STRUCTURALIST CLASSICS This page intentionally left blank POST-STRUCTURALIST CLASSICS Edited by ANDREW BENJAMIN First published in 1988 by Routledge This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1988 Andrew Benjamin ‘Beyond Aporia’ is a translation of Comment S’en Sortir by Sarah Kofman © Editions Galilee 1983 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-69377-7 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-315-52921-9 (Set) (ebk) ISBN: 978-1-138-68951-0 (Volume 5) (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-68952-7 (Volume 5) (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-53759-7 (Volume 5) (ebk) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. Post-structuralist classics edited by Andrew Benjamin First published in 1988 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001 ‘Beyond Aporia is a translation of Comment S’en Sortir by Sara Kofman, © Editions Galilee 1983 Printed in Great Britain by TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Post-structuralist classics!edited by Andrew Benjamin. p. cm.— (Warwick studies in philosophy and literature) Includes index. Contents. Beyond Aporia?¡Sarah Kofman—Hesiod's mimetic Muses and the strategies of deconstructionfGiovanni Ferrari—Desire and the figure o f fun!Simon Goldhill—Time and interpretation in Heraclitus/Andrew Benjamin—Banter and banquets for heroic death /Pietro Pucci—Knowledge is remembrance!David Farrell Kent— On the saying that philosophy begins in the thaumazeinljohn Llewelyn—Entertaining arguments!John Henderson—Sunt aliquid manes!Rowland Cotterill—Concealing revealing/David Halliburton. 1. Classical literature—History and criticism. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 3. Structuralism (Literary analysis) I. Benjamin, Andrew E. II. Series. PA3003.P64 1988 180—del 9 88-4384 ISBN 0-415-00922-7 Contents 1 Introduction Andrew benjamin 1 2 Beyond Aporia? sarah kofman 7 3 Hesiod’s mimetic Muses and the strategies of deconstruction giovanni Ferrari 45 4 Desire and the figure of fun: glossing Theocritus 11 SIMON GOLDHILL 79 5 Time and interpretation in Heraclitus Andrew benjamin 106 6 Banter and banquets for heroic death pietro pucci 132 7 'Knowledge is remembrance’: Diotima’s instruction at Symposium 207c 8 - 208b 6 david farrell krell 160 8 On the saying that philosophy begins in thaumazein john llewelyn 173 9 Entertaining arguments: Terence Adelphoe JOHN HENDERSON 192 10 ‘Sunt aliquid manes’: personalities, personae and ghosts in Augustan poetry Rowland cotterill 227 11 Concealing revealing: a perspective on Greek tragedy david H alliburton 245 Index 268 V This page intentionally left blank 1 Introduction ANDREW BENJAMIN In recent years a number of new approaches to the reading of literary and philosophical texts has emerged. This emergence, while it has its origin in French and German thought, has come if not to dominate then at least to exert a profound influence on Anglo- American philosophical and literary studies. If the use of the ‘post’ to indicate such a departure has any function at all then what it marks is a textual practice which takes place in the wake of a critique of (amongst other things) humanism, intentionality and historical reductionism. A number of proper names have come to play a major role in these recent adventures. In the case of German thought these names are Heidegger and Gadamer. The impact of French thought offers us no one proper name as such. There is rather a persuasive influence that comes, for example, from Lacan, and hence the inclusion of psychoanalysis within textual studies; there is also the influence of Derrida and of a number of other and perhaps less well known philosophers and literary critics. The importance of French thought is that it has provided a domain of experimentation. In the wake of the critique of the certainties that have dominated the reading of texts which were for the most part based in the concept of the subject, there is now a freedom in which the rules of evaluation and assessment are in the process of being negotiated. The case of Heidegger is of course more complex. On the one hand Heidegger has given rise to a new orthodoxy, and on the other the use of his work has occasioned developments - especially in philosophy - which have in part overcome the hinderances and restrictions that analytic philosophy imposed on the development 1 ANDREW BENJAMIN of philosophy itself. Even the emergence of a new orthodoxy presents an exciting stimulus to philosophical thought. It is situated in the ‘post’ because it inherently contains those critical moments which mark the beginning of the post-structuralist adventure. The clearest example of this is Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism1 which is an attempt to free philosophical thought from its dependence on Cartesian subjectivity and hence the certitude of the cogito. Even if one does not wish to accept the consequences of Heidegger’s critique of Descartes, the nature of the critique locates Heidegger’s philosophical enterprise within the ambit of post-structuralist thought, a location which is strengthened by the importance that is presently given to Derrida’s reading of Heidegger. Derrida has read Heidegger in a way that frees much of his writings from any easy reincorporation into German hermeneutic theory. Indeed, today it is perhaps possible to say that Heidegger’s survival — the capacity of Heidegger to live on — is in no small part due to the meticulous reading of his texts undertaken by Derrida. Classical studies have always been concerned with meticulous readings. Even though the Anglo-American tradition has failed to understand the inherently theoretical dimension of reading and interpretation, the German and French philosophers concerned with classical studies have been deeply concerned with the prob- lems of interpretation. This is especially the case with the originator of contemporary hermeneutics, F. Schleiermacher. His introduction to his own translation of Plato’s works2 is an attempt to draw important connections between the scholarly activity of translating Greek and the philosophical activity of interpretation. Both Heidegger and Gadamer have demonstrated their recognition of the important philosophical issues at stake in translation and even in discussions concerned to establish a correct edition of a particular philosophical or literary text. Once again, even if one wanted either to resist or disagree with Heidegger or Gadamer’s reading of Greek philosophical texts, what can never be denied is the active interplay between the establishing, translating and interpreting of texts and philosophy itself. One of the major characteristics of post-structuralist thought is the growing interdependence and hence inseparability of philos- ophy and literary theory. While the distinction is maintained by the structure of university departments, it is no longer the case that philosophers have nothing to say about literary texts or that literary Introduction critics are silent about philosophical texts. While in the Anglo- American academic world this development is new and — for some - potentially disturbing, for the European tradition it is a common- place. Even leaving Heidegger and Gadamer to one side in the German tradition, philosophers and critics such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Peter Szondi were always concerned with the interplay between the philosophical and the literary. Recently in the USA the work of Paul de Man also exemp- lifies this refusal to be limited by the institutionally inspired and maintained distinction between philosophy and literature. This refusal cannot be restricted to de Man; indeed, there is a whole new generation of both critics and philosophers whose work refuses any straightforward distinction between the philosophical and the literary. One major consequence of which is that the concern with textuality which is lacking in analytic philosophy is overcome in current philosophical and literary studies that derives its orientation from the European tradition. Reciprocally, of course, the severing of the link between the analysis of texts and interpretation that marks the work of many writers in the domain of literary theory (and especially in classical studies) is joined in the work which takes place under the general rubric of post-structuralism. The papers included in this volume all exemplify these contemporary concerns. This is not to suggest that they all offer the same approach and all agree in matters of interpretation; rather that they all exhibit a concern with topics and the modes of approach afforded by a critique of conventional methods of analysis and philosophical activity. While it is obviously problematic to try to delimit the specificity of individual papers by allocating them to a general group, the papers in this volume reveal three different, though at times related, points of departure.