To Become What One Is

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-263
Author(s):  
Lindsay Waters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
English Language ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
De Man ◽  
Power Central

In the twentieth century, criticism flourished in the academy in the English language from the 1930s to the 1960s, but gradually a hyperprofessionalized discourse purporting to be criticism took its place. The problem was exacerbated because people misunderstand literary theory thinking it superior to criticism. Big mistake. Theory proper begins its life as criticism, criticism that has staying power. Central to criticism as Kant argued is judgment. Judgment is based on feeling provoked by the artwork in our encounters with artworks. This essay talks about the author’s encounter with Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica. The critical judgment puts the artwork into a milieu. This essay argues the case for the holism of critical judgments versus what the author calls Bitsiness as Usual, the fragmentation of our understanding of our encounters with artworks. The author subjects both Paul de Man and the New Historicists to severe attacks.

The Critical-Linguistic Critique of the Aesthetic Ideology in the Late Writing of Paul de Man

Labyrinth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Jeremy Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Aesthetic Ideology ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
De Man ◽  
The Relationship

The focus of this essay is Paul de Man's provocative antipathy towards the category of the aesthetic in his late writings on philosophical aesthetics. I introduce de Man's critique of what he terms aesthetic ideology – a form of ideological communication – which he considers manifest in the aesthetics of Schiller in particular but also in more scrupulously critical philosophers. I begin the essay with Benjamin's well known observation that twentieth century fascisms aestheticized political practice as part of a defence of existing property relations. I introduce de Man's critique of aesthetic ideology as a way of developing or elaborating on what are relatively sketchy comments on the relationship aesthetics and politics in Benjamin's earlier essay.

De Man, Paul (1919–83

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Bahti
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Philosophic Texts ◽  
De Man ◽  
Rhetorical Reading

De Man’s work is among the most renowned and influential in American literary theory of the latter twentieth century, especially regarding literary theory’s emergence as an interdisciplinary and philosophically ambitious discourse. Always emphasizing the linguistic aspects of a literary work over thematic, semantic or evaluative ones, de Man specifically focuses on the figurative features of literary language and their consequences for the undecidability of meaning. His extension of his mode of ‘rhetorical reading’ to philosophic texts also participates in the blurring of generic and institutional distinctions between literature and philosophy, a tendency pronounced in French philosophy of the latter twentieth century.

Deconstruction, Walt Whitman, and the Purpose of Literary Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-75
Author(s):  
Anton Pokrivčák
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Walt Whitman ◽  
First Century ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Literary Education ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
De Man

AbstractThe article explores the purpose of literary theory, and, consequently, literary education at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It first discusses some of the ideas of Paul de Man for whom literary scholarship is challenged by the incompatibility between the nature of the object of literary theory and the methods used to analyse it. Then the author briefly traces some other ideas regarding the nature of literature and their reflection in establishing the purpose of literary education. A particular emphasis is paid to a re-evaluation of the universality of Walt Whitman´s message, as expressed in his “Song of Myself,” under the circumstances of contemporary ideological and cultural struggles.

The Foundering of Aesthetics: Thoughts on the Current State of Comparative Literature

Tekstualia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (31) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Samuel Weber ◽  
Marta Nowicka ◽  
Tomasz Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Current State ◽  
De Man

The article investigates major preoccupations of comparative literature at the end of the twentieth century. Evoking René Wellek and Paul de Man, the discussion focuses on a rereading of selected aspects of Immanuel Kant. The argument points out the differences between Comparative Literature and „general literature”.

scholarly journals A Society of Solitaries: An Anglophone Literary Circle in Montreal

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Frédette
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
Literary Community ◽  
Small Press ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Literary Circles

Quebec has been home to a rich and vibrant English-language literary community since the nineteenth century. The rise of the Canadian small-press movement in the 1960s gave way to a revival of the English-language publishing industry in Montreal, which had considerably dwindled at the turn of the twentieth century. Poets benefited greatly from this phenomenon, and literary coteries of poets were formed as a result, in particular the Vehicule Poets, associated with the Véhicule Art Gallery and with Véhicule Press in the early 1970s, and a group of poets who were associated with New Delta and later with the Signal Editions poetry series. This paper focuses on the ways in which literary circles are formed and how they might be identified, and uses the Jubilate Circle, a group of poets revolving around Signal Editions and consisting of Michael Harris, David Solway, Carmine Starnino and Eric Ormsby, as a case study.

scholarly journals The Critic and the Mime

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (95) ◽  
pp. 93-119
Author(s):  
Nidesh Lawtoo
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
De Man ◽  
Rhetorical Reading

In this interview, J. Hillis Miller and Nidesh Lawtoo take one of the most influential concepts in Western aesthetics, mimēsis, as an Ariadne’s thread to retrace the major turns in Miller’s career and, by extension, to promote a re-turn of mimesis in literary theory and criticism. Complicating standard accounts of deconstruction and rhetorical reading as simply antimimetic, Miller acknowledges the centrality of this ancient concept to his intellectual development and to major turns in literary theory as well: his early engagement with New Criticism and phenomenology in the 1950s, his encounter with Jacques Derrida and deconstruction in the 1960s, his development of rhetorical reading in the company of Paul de Man in the 1970s and 1980s, and his engagement with ethics and community in 1990s and 2000s, stretching to include his most recent critical reflections on contemporary US politics and the new media that disseminate it. In the process, this interview reveals how mimēsis functions as a protean concept, or mime, that under different conceptual masks is constantly at play in Miller’s dialogic relation with criticism and theory, old and new. Staging a dialogue, Miller and Lawtoo join forces to show that this often marginalized literary-philosophical concept takes center stage in the political, ethical, scientific, and technological transformations that cast a shadow on present and future generations.

The Return to/of Theory

differences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-96
Author(s):  
Kamelia Spassova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
De Man ◽  
Dominant Part

In his paper “The Return to Philology,” Paul de Man insists that philology and theory should not be in conflict, but should, rather, mutually enhance one another. This claim that the turn to theory is also a return to philology is explored in the context of the structure of language. In the last twenty to twenty-five years, the return to philology has been a dominant part of the Anglo-Saxon discourse of “world literature,” which has turned away from theory. The return to philology is captured in a market-based adaptation of literature in terms of globalization, transnationalism, and translation. In his latest book The Birth and Death of Literary Theory (2019), Galin Tihanov recalls the legacy of classical literary theory and propounds the contemporary discourse of world literature as an unreflected continuation of this legacy as it was articulated in Viktor Shklovsky’s and Mikhail Bakhtin’s approaches to literature beyond language. Turning this legacy on its head, this essay focuses, rather, on language in literature. In a short-circuiting way, Roman Jakobson’s linguistics and poetics and Erich Auerbach’s nonnational-based philology can be seen as surprisingly close to one another.

scholarly journals New Historicism: Text and Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Violeta M. Vesić
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Social ◽  
De Man

During most of the twentieth century history was seen as a phenomenon outside of literature that guaranteed the veracity of literary interpretation. History was unique and it functioned as a basis for reading literary works. During the seventies of the twentieth century there occurred a change of attitude towards history in American literary theory, and there appeared a new theoretical approach which soon became known as New Historicism. Since its inception, New Historicism has been identified with the study of Renaissance and Romanticism, but nowadays it has been increasingly involved in other literary trends. Although there are great differences in the arguments and practices at various representatives of this school, New Historicism has clearly recognizable features and many new historicists will agree with the statement of Walter Cohen that New Historicism, when it appeared in the eighties, represented something quite new in reference to the studies of theory, criticism and history (Cohen 1987, 33). Theoretical connection with Bakhtin, Foucault and Marx is clear, as well as a kind of uneasy tie with deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man. At the center of this approach is a renewed interest in the study of literary works in the light of historical and political circumstances in which they were created. Foucault encouraged readers to begin to move literary texts and to link them with discourses and representations that are not literary, as well as to examine the sociological aspects of the texts in order to take part in the social struggles of today.The study of literary works using New Historicism is the study of politics, history, culture and circumstances in which these works were created. With regard to one of the main fact which is located in the center of the criticism, that history cannot be viewed objectively and that reality can only be understood through a cultural context that reveals the work, re-reading and interpretation of literature is not just re-reading of texts that are already well known, but reading in a completely new way.

FOCUS: Through Chinese Eyes

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Theo D’haen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Global Media ◽  
European Literature ◽  
Language History ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In this FOCUS, eight contemporary Chinese literature scholars, in four articles, give their view of (some aspects of) the reception of Chinese literature and theory in Europe during the twentieth century. In the first article, Shunqing Cao and Zhoukun Han discuss how Chinese literature has been read and misread in Europe, but also how it has given rise to literary innovations in European literature and theory. Peina Zhuang and Yina Cao detail how the earliest English-language history of Chinese literature at the turn of the twentieth century presented a very one-sided perspective of its subject. Qilin Fu and Shubo Gao trace the reception of Maoist Marxism in European literature and philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Yirong Hu and Lin Mei, finally, hold a plea for a redefinition of imagology to better account for the image of China in Europe and the West in an age of new global media.

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