Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-246) and index.
Contents:
PART I. INVENTION, ADVENT, EVENT: 1. After the Event: Looking back on Deconstruction; 2. The Discovery of America: the Reception of Derrida in the United States -- PART II. THE DOMESTICATION OF DERRIDA: 3. Domestication Narratives; 4. The Question of History in Derrida and de Man -- PART III. DECONSTRUCTION AND CRITICAL AUTHORITY: 5. Derrida and the Authority of Linguistics; 6. The Ventriloquism of Paul de Man -- PART IV. PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND RESPONSIBILITY: 7. Metaphor and the Invention of Truth; 8. Performativity and Obligation; 9. Conclusion: Invention and Responsibility.
Summary:
"Do not ask for the definition of deconstruction; ask for its history. What needs and desires did it meet at the time of its emergence? What kind of threat did it represent? How has our understanding of deconstruction changed over time? This book offers an account of the invention and reinvention of deconstruction in literary studies and the humanities more generally. Focusing on the work of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, it argues that the early impact of deconstruction was connected to its perceived assault upon truth. After de Man's death there is a steady insistence in Derrida's work on questions about time - invention, advent, event - and on the distance between them. This book tells the story of this transition from truth to time against a background of some of the most divisive debates of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first century, about politics, history and ethics"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.