Deconstruction Reframed

Deconstruction Reframed
Author: Floyd Merrell
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1985-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781557531506

"A fascinating venture into diverse but contiguous and even overlapping worlds that points out unexpected relationships between modern linguistics, textual analysis, philosophy, mathematics, fiction, physics, and much else. An illuminating, radically interdisciplinary achievement".--Walter J. Ong, S.J. (Philosophy)

From the New Criticism to Deconstruction

From the New Criticism to Deconstruction
Author: Art Berman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1988
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780252060021

From the New Criticism to Deconstruction traces the transitions in American critical theory and practice from the 1950s to the 1980s. It focuses on the influence of French structuralism and post-structuralism on American deconstruction within a wide-ranging context that includes literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, technology, and politics.

Deconstructing Macbeth

Deconstructing Macbeth
Author: Harald William Fawkner
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1990
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780838633939

Macbeth is discussed in relation to Derrida's notion of the metaphysics of presence. Fawkner argues that the quest for metaphysical certitude in Macbeth is related to the hero's transformation from a heroic to a post-heroic status.

Derrida Reframed

Derrida Reframed
Author: K. Malcolm Richards
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0857718908

Are your students baffled by Baudrillard? Dazed by Deleuze? Confused by Kristeva? Other beginners' guides can feel as impenetrable as the original texts to students who 'think in images'. "Contemporary Thinkers Reframed" instead uses the language of the arts to explore the usefulness in practice of complex ideas. Short, contemporary and accessible, these lively books utilise actual examples of artworks, films, television shows, works of architecture, fashion and even computer games to explain and explore the work of the most commonly taught thinkers. Conceived specifically for the visually minded, the series will prove invaluable to students right across the visual arts.'Deconstruction' is touted in every visual area from architecture to fashion, yet few really understand what Derrida's notorious concept means, much less his elusive idea of 'differance'. In fact Derrida's work can seem almost impenetrable. This guide explains Derrida's key concepts through examples from across the whole spectrum of the arts, looking at the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi and Daniel Libeskind, fashion designers such as Ann Demeulemeister and at the work of artists as varied as Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Rachel Whiteread and Jeff Wall. Showing what Derrida's work really 'means' in practice, this short guide makes this thinker's complex work accessible to a wider public.

The Textual Sublime

The Textual Sublime
Author: International Association for Philosophy and Literature. Meeting
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791400746

This book addresses the question of deconstruction by asking what it is and discussing its alternatives. To what extent does deconstruction derive from a philosophical stance, and to what extent does it depend upon a set of strategies, moves, and rhetorical practices that result in criticism? Special attention is given to the formulations offered by Jacques Derrida (in relation to Heidegger's philosophy) and by Paul de Man (in relation to Kant's theory of the sublime and its implications for criticism). And what, in deconstructive terms, does it mean to translate from one textual corpus into another? Is it a matter of different theories of translation or of different practices? And what of difference itself? Does not difference already invoke the possibility of deconstruction's "others"? Althusser, Adorno, and Deleuze are offered as exemplary cases. The essays in this volume examine in detail these differences and alternatives. The Textual Sublime is particularly concerned with how a text (philosophical or literary) sets its own limits, borders, and margins, how it delimits what constitutes the text per se and how it invokes at the same time what is not determinately in the text. The textual sublime is that aspect of a text that deconstruction shows to be both an element of the text and what surpasses the text, what takes it outside itself (in view of alternatives and alterities) and what ties it to differing philosophical, rhetorical, historical, and critical practices.

Aesthetics and the Literature of Ideas

Aesthetics and the Literature of Ideas
Author: François Jost
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780874133639

This collection explores the aesthetic principles that pervade all sectors of human activities involving intellectual perceptiveness. The three areas of investigation are aesthetics and rationality in the realm of literary history and criticism; the genres and meanings in the metamorphosis of the arts: and aesthetics in literature, society, and politics.

The Derrida Reader

The Derrida Reader
Author: Jacques Derrida
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780803298071

In the English-speaking world, Jacques Derrida’s writings have most influenced the discipline of literary studies. Yet what has emerged since the initial phase of Derrida’s influence on the study of English literature, classed under the rubric of deconstruction, has often been disowned by Derrida. What, then, can Derrida teach us about literary language, about the rhetoric of literature, and about questions concerning style, form, and structure? The Derrida Reader draws together a number of Derrida’s most interesting and idiosyncratic essays that treat literary language, the idea of the literary, and questions of poetics and poetry. The essays discuss single tropes or concepts, a figure such as metaphor, the ideas of titles and signatures, proper names, and Derrida’s thinking on such subjects as undecidability or aporia. The editor’s introduction is a demonstration in practice of how Derrida reads and how he adapts the act of reading to the text or figure in question. The introduction also outlines each essay’s main points, its usefulness for reading literary texts, and its particular area of interest. The Derrida Reader thus provides students of literature with a focused, contextualized, and readily understandable volume.

Moments for Nothing

Moments for Nothing
Author: Gabriele Schwab
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231558996

Samuel Beckett’s work has entranced generations of readers with its portrayal of the end times. Beckett’s characters are preoccupied with death, and the specters of cataclysm and extinction overshadow their barren, bleak worlds. Yet somehow, they endure, experiencing surreal and often comic repetitions that seem at once to confront finitude and the infinite, up to the limits of existence. Gabriele Schwab draws on decades of close engagement with Beckett to explore how his work speaks to our current existential anxieties and fears. Interweaving critical analysis with personal reflections, she shows how Beckett’s writing provides unexpected resources for making sense of personal and planetary catastrophes. Moments for Nothing examines the ways Beckett’s works have taken on new meaning in an era of crises—climate change, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic—that are defined by both paralyzing stasis and pervasive uncertainty. They also offer a bracing depiction of aging and the end of life, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, and decay. Beckett’s particular vision of the apocalypse and his sense of persistence, Schwab argues, help us understand our times and even, perhaps, provide sanctuary and solace. Moments for Nothing features insightful close readings of iconic works such as Endgame, Happy Days, and the trilogy, as well as lesser-known writings including the thirty-five-second play Breath, which Schwab reconsiders in light of the pandemic.

Derrida

Derrida
Author: Christopher Norris
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1987
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674198241

Norris demonstrates that Derrida's texts should be understood more as philosophy than as literature. He explains the position of Derrida's writing within the Western philosophical tradition and discusses some of the reasons for the massive institutional resistance that has so far prevented philosophers from engaging seriously with Derrida's work.

Questions of the Liminal in the Fiction of Julio Cortazar

Questions of the Liminal in the Fiction of Julio Cortazar
Author: Domenic Moran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2017-12-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351198734

"The great Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar (1914-84) was immersed in one of the most vibrant and revolutionary intellectual scenes of the last century, the Paris of the 1950s and 60s. Yet his often highly cerebral work has never received the close philosophical attention it deserves. Moran's book fills this critical lacuna. Rather than indiscriminately applying 'theory' to Cortazar, it aims to show that his work both engages with and often foreshadows many of the problems which were to become central to so-called poststructuralist philosophy and poetics. This study demonstrates that Cortazar remains enduringly, problematically modern."