Is a willingness to carry an inquiry to the point of undecidability necessarily at odds with political engagement? In A World of Difference Barbara Johnson extends and rethinks the theoretical perspectives on literature opened up by her earlier book, The Critical Difference. Through subtle and probing analyses of texts by Wordsworth, Poe, Baudelaie, Mallarme, Thoreau, Mary Shelley, Zora Neale HUrston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others, she attempts to transfer the analysis of "difference" from the realm of linguistic universality or deconstructive allegory into contexts in which difference is very much at issue in the world. New to the paperback edition is a preface that readdresses the question of the politics of deconstruction in the context of current discussion about the life and works of Paul de Man.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Dazzling and fun, from the memorial to the formidable (or should I say notorious?) Paul de Man, which introduces the possibility of feminist deconstruction, to the revisions and re-readings of motherhood as a nearly untenable discursive position. Voice Literary Supplement Dazzling and fun, from the memorial to the formidable (or should I say notorious?) Paul de Man, which introduces the possibility of feminist deconstruction, to the revisions and re-readings of motherhood as a nearly untenable discursive position. Voice Literary Supplement
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 15 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-3745-6 (9780801837456)
DOI
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Barbara Johnson is professor of French and comparative literature at Harvard University. She is author of Defigurations du langage poetique and translator of Jacques Derrida's La Dissemination.
Autor*in
Harvard University
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. The Fate of Deconstruction
Chapter 1. Nothing Fails Like Success
Chapter 2. Rigorous Unreliability
Chapter 3. Is Writerliness Conservative?
Chapter 4. Gender Theory and the Yale School
Chapter 5. Deconstruction, Feminism, and Pedagogy
Part II. Significant Gaps
Chapter 6. A Hound, a Bay Horse, and a Turtle Dove: Obscurity in Walden
Chapter 7. Erasing Panama: Mallarme and the Text of History
Chapter 8. Teaching Ignorance: L'Ecole des femmes
Part III. Poetic Differences
Chapter 9. Strange Fits: Poe and Wordsworth on the Nature of Poetic Language
Chapter 10. Disfiguring Poetic Language
Chapter 11. Les Fleurs du Mal Arme: Some Reflections
Part IV. Other Inflections of Difference
Chapter 12. Mallarme as Mother
Chapter 13. My Monster/My Self
Chapter 14. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God
Chapter 15. Thresholds of Differences: Structures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston
Chapter 16. Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion
Appendix to Chapter 7
Appendix to Chapter 16
Notes
Index
