Morwenna Ludlow
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199280766
- eISBN:
- 9780191712906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280766.003.0016
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter presents an overview of Part IV of the book, which extends the discussion of Gregory of Nyssa's concept of epektasis which was begun in Chapter 7. From the perspective of theologians of ...
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This chapter presents an overview of Part IV of the book, which extends the discussion of Gregory of Nyssa's concept of epektasis which was begun in Chapter 7. From the perspective of theologians of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, who frequently question previous assumptions about the nature of theology and its relation to contemporary culture, the writings of Gregory are very interesting and attractive: not only did he write about the nature of God and the difficulty of knowing God, but he also wrote about the nature of language (both religious and non-religious) and its implications for the writing of theology. Furthermore, he, along with the other Cappadocian fathers, is quite clearly in his writings trying to negotiate a place for Christian theology in the late antique world: he develops various genres of theological writing, and thinks about the arenas of theological reflection and Christian action (monasteries and every day life). To him, the questions of what theology is and how it should be done are very live. The chapters in this part of the book focus on two readings of Gregory (from Scot Douglass and John Milbank) which set him alongside, or in the context of, writers such as Heidegger, Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion.Less
This chapter presents an overview of Part IV of the book, which extends the discussion of Gregory of Nyssa's concept of epektasis which was begun in Chapter 7. From the perspective of theologians of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, who frequently question previous assumptions about the nature of theology and its relation to contemporary culture, the writings of Gregory are very interesting and attractive: not only did he write about the nature of God and the difficulty of knowing God, but he also wrote about the nature of language (both religious and non-religious) and its implications for the writing of theology. Furthermore, he, along with the other Cappadocian fathers, is quite clearly in his writings trying to negotiate a place for Christian theology in the late antique world: he develops various genres of theological writing, and thinks about the arenas of theological reflection and Christian action (monasteries and every day life). To him, the questions of what theology is and how it should be done are very live. The chapters in this part of the book focus on two readings of Gregory (from Scot Douglass and John Milbank) which set him alongside, or in the context of, writers such as Heidegger, Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion.
Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184997
- eISBN:
- 9780191674426
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184997.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
This study engages with the troubled question of authorial subjectivity and ethics in Modernism in general and in Conrad's short fiction in particular, and offers an original theoretical perspective, ...
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This study engages with the troubled question of authorial subjectivity and ethics in Modernism in general and in Conrad's short fiction in particular, and offers an original theoretical perspective, inspired by the work of Derrida and the early philosophical writings of M. M. Bakhtin. Part One of the book focuses on the relational dynamics in Under Western Eyes and The Secret Sharer, and develops a ‘heterobiographical’ reading matrix, which serves as a psycho-textual and philosophical approach to modes of authorial presence in the text. Part Two offers close readings of ten short stories spanning the whole of Conrad's career and clustered into five chapters — Writing and Fratricide, The Pathos of Authenticity, The Poetics of Cultural Despair, The Romantic paradox, and Addressing the Woman. This part of the book engages with the interpretative problems posed by these stories through a cultural-historical perspective, linking Conrad's essentially Romantic sensibility and his unique position on the threshold of Modernism with some of the issues that have emerged from the ‘Postmodern turn’: the relationship between metaphysics and subjectivity, the conception of inter-subjectivity as prior to and constitutive of subjectivity; the permeability of textual and psychological boundary-lines; and the desire for subjective aesthetization.Less
This study engages with the troubled question of authorial subjectivity and ethics in Modernism in general and in Conrad's short fiction in particular, and offers an original theoretical perspective, inspired by the work of Derrida and the early philosophical writings of M. M. Bakhtin. Part One of the book focuses on the relational dynamics in Under Western Eyes and The Secret Sharer, and develops a ‘heterobiographical’ reading matrix, which serves as a psycho-textual and philosophical approach to modes of authorial presence in the text. Part Two offers close readings of ten short stories spanning the whole of Conrad's career and clustered into five chapters — Writing and Fratricide, The Pathos of Authenticity, The Poetics of Cultural Despair, The Romantic paradox, and Addressing the Woman. This part of the book engages with the interpretative problems posed by these stories through a cultural-historical perspective, linking Conrad's essentially Romantic sensibility and his unique position on the threshold of Modernism with some of the issues that have emerged from the ‘Postmodern turn’: the relationship between metaphysics and subjectivity, the conception of inter-subjectivity as prior to and constitutive of subjectivity; the permeability of textual and psychological boundary-lines; and the desire for subjective aesthetization.
Amit Chaudhuri and Tom Paulin
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199260522
- eISBN:
- 9780191698668
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199260522.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This study explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a ‘foreigner’ in the English canon. Focussing on poetry, the book examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in ...
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This study explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a ‘foreigner’ in the English canon. Focussing on poetry, the book examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in terms of their ‘difference.’ In contrast to the Leavisite project of placing Lawrence in the English ‘great tradition,’ this study demonstrates how Lawrence's writing brings into question the notion of ‘Englishness’ itself. It also shows how Lawrence's aesthetic set him apart radically from both his Modernist contemporaries and his Romantic forbears. The starting-point of this enquiry into Lawrentian ‘difference’ is, for the purposes of this study, the poetry, its stylistic features, the ways in which it has been read, and, importantly, it involves a search for a critical language by which the poetry, and its ‘difference’, might be addressed. In doing so, this book takes recourse to Jacques Derrida's notions of ‘grammatology’ and ‘ecriture’, and Michel Foucault's notion of ‘discourse’. Referring to Lawrence's travel writings about Mexico and Italy, his essays on European and Etruscan art, on Mexican marketplaces and rituals, and American literature, and especially to his poetic manifesto, ‘The Poetry of the Present,’ this book shows how Lawrence was working towards both a theory and a practice that critiqued the post-Enlightenment unitary European self. The book also, radically, allows a post-colonial identity to inform the reading of the poetry, and to let the poems enter into a conversation with that identity.Less
This study explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a ‘foreigner’ in the English canon. Focussing on poetry, the book examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in terms of their ‘difference.’ In contrast to the Leavisite project of placing Lawrence in the English ‘great tradition,’ this study demonstrates how Lawrence's writing brings into question the notion of ‘Englishness’ itself. It also shows how Lawrence's aesthetic set him apart radically from both his Modernist contemporaries and his Romantic forbears. The starting-point of this enquiry into Lawrentian ‘difference’ is, for the purposes of this study, the poetry, its stylistic features, the ways in which it has been read, and, importantly, it involves a search for a critical language by which the poetry, and its ‘difference’, might be addressed. In doing so, this book takes recourse to Jacques Derrida's notions of ‘grammatology’ and ‘ecriture’, and Michel Foucault's notion of ‘discourse’. Referring to Lawrence's travel writings about Mexico and Italy, his essays on European and Etruscan art, on Mexican marketplaces and rituals, and American literature, and especially to his poetic manifesto, ‘The Poetry of the Present,’ this book shows how Lawrence was working towards both a theory and a practice that critiqued the post-Enlightenment unitary European self. The book also, radically, allows a post-colonial identity to inform the reading of the poetry, and to let the poems enter into a conversation with that identity.
Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184997
- eISBN:
- 9780191674426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184997.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
Having begun this study from the perspective of Romanticism, it is inevitable that the topic ultimately turns to Postmodernism. The various aspects of this study can all be viewed through a ...
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Having begun this study from the perspective of Romanticism, it is inevitable that the topic ultimately turns to Postmodernism. The various aspects of this study can all be viewed through a Postmodernist prism: the concept of ‘heterobiography’ which uses the designation of permeable boundary lines; the ‘logic of fratricide’ which supplants the logic of sameness and self-identity; the ‘pathos of authenticity’ which emerges from the loss of origins and destinations; the ‘poetics of cultural despair’ which positions writing as a Trojan Horse; the ‘romantic paradox’ which underlies the circularity of desire and subjectivity; and the foredoomed desire to bolster up the borderlines of masculinity in the attempt to ‘address the woman’. The very same questions which energize Conrad's fiction during the first two decades of the century have only begun to surface in the discourse of philosophy fifty years later.Less
Having begun this study from the perspective of Romanticism, it is inevitable that the topic ultimately turns to Postmodernism. The various aspects of this study can all be viewed through a Postmodernist prism: the concept of ‘heterobiography’ which uses the designation of permeable boundary lines; the ‘logic of fratricide’ which supplants the logic of sameness and self-identity; the ‘pathos of authenticity’ which emerges from the loss of origins and destinations; the ‘poetics of cultural despair’ which positions writing as a Trojan Horse; the ‘romantic paradox’ which underlies the circularity of desire and subjectivity; and the foredoomed desire to bolster up the borderlines of masculinity in the attempt to ‘address the woman’. The very same questions which energize Conrad's fiction during the first two decades of the century have only begun to surface in the discourse of philosophy fifty years later.
Timothy Ward
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199244386
- eISBN:
- 9780191697364
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244386.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies, Theology
What are Christians saying when they call the Bible the Word of God? How is that statement to be understood in relation to postmodernity's suspicion of meaning? This book tackles these questions by ...
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What are Christians saying when they call the Bible the Word of God? How is that statement to be understood in relation to postmodernity's suspicion of meaning? This book tackles these questions by bringing postmodern theory into critical dialogue with the often-neglected doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. The notion of the ‘sufficiency’ of a text, and the contrasting idea of the ‘supplement(s)’ which texts carry with them, together provide a sharp critical tool for analysing a variety of contemporary hermeneutical and doctrinal positions. Brought into this discussion are Derrida, from whom the idea of ‘supplement’ is borrowed; Barth, Frei, Fish, Hirsch, Hauerwas, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Fowl, Wolterstorff, Vanhoozer, Childs, and Warfield. Building especially on descriptions of language as action, the book critically reconstructs ‘the sufficiency of Scripture’ as both a concept and a doctrine which must remain central to Christian theology and practice.Less
What are Christians saying when they call the Bible the Word of God? How is that statement to be understood in relation to postmodernity's suspicion of meaning? This book tackles these questions by bringing postmodern theory into critical dialogue with the often-neglected doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. The notion of the ‘sufficiency’ of a text, and the contrasting idea of the ‘supplement(s)’ which texts carry with them, together provide a sharp critical tool for analysing a variety of contemporary hermeneutical and doctrinal positions. Brought into this discussion are Derrida, from whom the idea of ‘supplement’ is borrowed; Barth, Frei, Fish, Hirsch, Hauerwas, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Fowl, Wolterstorff, Vanhoozer, Childs, and Warfield. Building especially on descriptions of language as action, the book critically reconstructs ‘the sufficiency of Scripture’ as both a concept and a doctrine which must remain central to Christian theology and practice.
David Howarth
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198292371
- eISBN:
- 9780191600159
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198292376.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Reference
An overview of contributions to the development of discourse theoretical approaches in social science from the work of Althusser, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe. Particular attention is ...
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An overview of contributions to the development of discourse theoretical approaches in social science from the work of Althusser, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe. Particular attention is given to the concepts of signification, antagonisms, political subjectivity, agency, hegemony, the hermeneutical tradition in social science, and how to apply deconstruction methods.Less
An overview of contributions to the development of discourse theoretical approaches in social science from the work of Althusser, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau, and Mouffe. Particular attention is given to the concepts of signification, antagonisms, political subjectivity, agency, hegemony, the hermeneutical tradition in social science, and how to apply deconstruction methods.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as ...
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This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.Less
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.
Maria O’sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266670
- eISBN:
- 9780191905391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266670.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
In Roland Barthes’s ‘Michelet, l’histoire et la mort’ (1951), Michelet’s linear journey through centuries of French history is contrasted with the panoramic ‘tableau’ that holds together, in a moment ...
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In Roland Barthes’s ‘Michelet, l’histoire et la mort’ (1951), Michelet’s linear journey through centuries of French history is contrasted with the panoramic ‘tableau’ that holds together, in a moment of euphoric understanding, otherwise unconnected points in time. This chapter moves from this play of reversible and irreversible time to that of centred and decentred spaces in an unpublished section of Barthes’s 1966–7 seminar, ‘Le discours de l’histoire’. It suggests that Barthes’s discussion of time and space, which draws on the work of Vernant, Levêque, and Vidal-Naquet, and is applied to Michelet, Machiavelli, and Bossuet, can be mapped onto a shift from a structuralist focus on intra-relations between elements of a structure (as in Lévi-Strauss’s account of totemism) to the nascent post-structuralist emphasis on excentric structures associated with Derrida’s notion of ‘play’. The excentric centre is shown to underpin Barthes’s analysis of Michelet’s Tableau de la France, whereby Jakobson’s account of the poetic function of language is applied to Michelet’s rhetorical construction of the geography of France: the sequential ordering of the outlying regions according to their antithetical characteristics is ‘poetic’ in its form; by contrast, the ‘prosaic’ centre (the Île de France) absorbs and neutralises these differences.Less
In Roland Barthes’s ‘Michelet, l’histoire et la mort’ (1951), Michelet’s linear journey through centuries of French history is contrasted with the panoramic ‘tableau’ that holds together, in a moment of euphoric understanding, otherwise unconnected points in time. This chapter moves from this play of reversible and irreversible time to that of centred and decentred spaces in an unpublished section of Barthes’s 1966–7 seminar, ‘Le discours de l’histoire’. It suggests that Barthes’s discussion of time and space, which draws on the work of Vernant, Levêque, and Vidal-Naquet, and is applied to Michelet, Machiavelli, and Bossuet, can be mapped onto a shift from a structuralist focus on intra-relations between elements of a structure (as in Lévi-Strauss’s account of totemism) to the nascent post-structuralist emphasis on excentric structures associated with Derrida’s notion of ‘play’. The excentric centre is shown to underpin Barthes’s analysis of Michelet’s Tableau de la France, whereby Jakobson’s account of the poetic function of language is applied to Michelet’s rhetorical construction of the geography of France: the sequential ordering of the outlying regions according to their antithetical characteristics is ‘poetic’ in its form; by contrast, the ‘prosaic’ centre (the Île de France) absorbs and neutralises these differences.
Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Deconstruction was always about force, the force of language in action, the force of the creative and the artistic process, the force of history and the passion for a history that remains yet “to ...
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Deconstruction was always about force, the force of language in action, the force of the creative and the artistic process, the force of history and the passion for a history that remains yet “to come.” This force is also the key to Hegel, though not the Hegel with which we are familiar.Less
Deconstruction was always about force, the force of language in action, the force of the creative and the artistic process, the force of history and the passion for a history that remains yet “to come.” This force is also the key to Hegel, though not the Hegel with which we are familiar.
Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order ...
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Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order today has become an impossible economy. Its impossibility is enabled by the unboundedness of desire for a pure gift economy—and a corresponding popular will that generates the political fantasies legitimating these desires.Less
Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order today has become an impossible economy. Its impossibility is enabled by the unboundedness of desire for a pure gift economy—and a corresponding popular will that generates the political fantasies legitimating these desires.
Michael P. Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195333527
- eISBN:
- 9780199868896
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195333527.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
The turn of the millennium has brought with it a vigorous revival in the interdisciplinary study of theology and art. The notion of a Catholic imagination, however, as a specific category of ...
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The turn of the millennium has brought with it a vigorous revival in the interdisciplinary study of theology and art. The notion of a Catholic imagination, however, as a specific category of aesthetics, lacks thematic and theological coherence. More often, the idea of a Catholic imagination functions at this time as a deeply felt intuition about the organic connections that exist among theological insights, cultural background, and literary expression. The book explores the many ways that the theological work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) provides the model, content, and optic for demonstrating the credibility and range of a Catholic imagination. Since Balthasar views arts and literatures precisely as theologies, the book surveys a broad array of poetry, drama, fiction, and film and sets these readings against the central aspects of Balthasar's theological program. A major consequence of this study is the recovery of the legitimate place of a distinct “theological imagination” in the critical study of literary and narrative art. The book also argues that Balthasar's voice both complements and challenges contemporary critical theory and contends that postmodern interpretive methodology, with its careful critique of entrenched philosophical assumptions and reiterated codes of meaning, is not the threat to theological meaning that many fear. On the contrary, postmodernism can provide both literary critics and theologians alike with the tools that assess, challenge, and celebrate the theological imagination as it is depicted in literary art today.Less
The turn of the millennium has brought with it a vigorous revival in the interdisciplinary study of theology and art. The notion of a Catholic imagination, however, as a specific category of aesthetics, lacks thematic and theological coherence. More often, the idea of a Catholic imagination functions at this time as a deeply felt intuition about the organic connections that exist among theological insights, cultural background, and literary expression. The book explores the many ways that the theological work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) provides the model, content, and optic for demonstrating the credibility and range of a Catholic imagination. Since Balthasar views arts and literatures precisely as theologies, the book surveys a broad array of poetry, drama, fiction, and film and sets these readings against the central aspects of Balthasar's theological program. A major consequence of this study is the recovery of the legitimate place of a distinct “theological imagination” in the critical study of literary and narrative art. The book also argues that Balthasar's voice both complements and challenges contemporary critical theory and contends that postmodern interpretive methodology, with its careful critique of entrenched philosophical assumptions and reiterated codes of meaning, is not the threat to theological meaning that many fear. On the contrary, postmodernism can provide both literary critics and theologians alike with the tools that assess, challenge, and celebrate the theological imagination as it is depicted in literary art today.
Jacques Derrida
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170222
- eISBN:
- 9780231540124
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170222.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Jacques Derrida’s short remarks on love, excerpted from a series of interviews, highlights the central importance of the question of love to philosophy.
Jacques Derrida’s short remarks on love, excerpted from a series of interviews, highlights the central importance of the question of love to philosophy.
Peggy Kamuf
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282302
- eISBN:
- 9780823284801
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282302.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book pursues Derrida’s assertion, in The Death Penalty, Volume I, that “the modern history of the institution named literature in Europe over the last three or four centuries is contemporary ...
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This book pursues Derrida’s assertion, in The Death Penalty, Volume I, that “the modern history of the institution named literature in Europe over the last three or four centuries is contemporary with and indissociable from a contestation of the death penalty.” The main question this book poses is: How does literature contest the death penalty today, particularly in the United States where it remains the last of its kind, a Christian-inspired death penalty in what professes to be a democracy? What resources do fiction, narrative, and poetic language supply in the age of the remains of the death penalty? These are among the questions that guide the analyses of four literary works, each a depiction or an account of an execution, in the search for deconstructive leverage on the concepts that prop up capital punishment. Different pertinent features are isolated in these texts: the “mysteries” of literary or poetic witness; the publicness of punishment in an era of secrecy around the death penalty; the undecidable difference between death by capital punishment and by suicide—a difference that Kant enforces and that Derrida contests; and even the collapse of the distinction between the sovereign powers to put to death and to pardon, a possibility that is shown up by a poetic work when, performatively, it “plays the law.” In relation to the death penalties they represent, these literary survivals may be seen as the ashes or remains of the phantasm that the death penalty has always been, the phantasm of calculating and thus ending finitude.Less
This book pursues Derrida’s assertion, in The Death Penalty, Volume I, that “the modern history of the institution named literature in Europe over the last three or four centuries is contemporary with and indissociable from a contestation of the death penalty.” The main question this book poses is: How does literature contest the death penalty today, particularly in the United States where it remains the last of its kind, a Christian-inspired death penalty in what professes to be a democracy? What resources do fiction, narrative, and poetic language supply in the age of the remains of the death penalty? These are among the questions that guide the analyses of four literary works, each a depiction or an account of an execution, in the search for deconstructive leverage on the concepts that prop up capital punishment. Different pertinent features are isolated in these texts: the “mysteries” of literary or poetic witness; the publicness of punishment in an era of secrecy around the death penalty; the undecidable difference between death by capital punishment and by suicide—a difference that Kant enforces and that Derrida contests; and even the collapse of the distinction between the sovereign powers to put to death and to pardon, a possibility that is shown up by a poetic work when, performatively, it “plays the law.” In relation to the death penalties they represent, these literary survivals may be seen as the ashes or remains of the phantasm that the death penalty has always been, the phantasm of calculating and thus ending finitude.
John J. Furlong
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195311600
- eISBN:
- 9780199870707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311600.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
When teaching the Analects to Western students, it is imperative first to “defamiliarize” or “disenchant” students from their fetishized Confucian and ancient Chinese schemata by using materials from ...
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When teaching the Analects to Western students, it is imperative first to “defamiliarize” or “disenchant” students from their fetishized Confucian and ancient Chinese schemata by using materials from the Warring States project instrumentally, reading the Analects in that “positivist” cultural‐historical context. One then may “reenchant” or “refamiliarize” the Analects —make it “mean” and connect to students' own conceptual schemes and culturally shaped religious and philosophical yearnings, while refusing to reduce the text to those cultural shapes. The project of reenchanting Confucius should not resolve the question of whether the Analects is a religious or philosophical or uniquely historico‐cultural product of some other nature but rather constantly to defer it, refuse to foreclose it, continue to address and appreciate its complexities and conundra.Less
When teaching the Analects to Western students, it is imperative first to “defamiliarize” or “disenchant” students from their fetishized Confucian and ancient Chinese schemata by using materials from the Warring States project instrumentally, reading the Analects in that “positivist” cultural‐historical context. One then may “reenchant” or “refamiliarize” the Analects —make it “mean” and connect to students' own conceptual schemes and culturally shaped religious and philosophical yearnings, while refusing to reduce the text to those cultural shapes. The project of reenchanting Confucius should not resolve the question of whether the Analects is a religious or philosophical or uniquely historico‐cultural product of some other nature but rather constantly to defer it, refuse to foreclose it, continue to address and appreciate its complexities and conundra.
Michael Patrick Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195333527
- eISBN:
- 9780199868896
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195333527.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 5 presents a reading of David Lodge's novel Therapy (1995) in light of Balthasar's Theo‐logic. Lodge does well to illustrate that the erasure of God that preoccupies postmodern consciousness ...
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Chapter 5 presents a reading of David Lodge's novel Therapy (1995) in light of Balthasar's Theo‐logic. Lodge does well to illustrate that the erasure of God that preoccupies postmodern consciousness significantly affects contemporary conceptions about “subject formation” and “people in relation.” Lodge develops these themes by constructing a narrative that mirrors both the theological trajectory of Balthasar's tripartite program and the existential progression identified by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard—namely, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious “stages” of human experience. Importantly, a close consideration of Kierkegaard's stages reveals a direct analogy with the transcendentals, which, in turn, illuminates one of the many reasons why Balthasar admired Kierkegaard and why Lodge's novel is a fertile literary example of Balthasar's Theologic. By a close consideration of the triadic structure of being presented by a variety of sources, the chapter begins to discern how God's logic—how human logic—exists in a trinitarian dynamic.Less
Chapter 5 presents a reading of David Lodge's novel Therapy (1995) in light of Balthasar's Theo‐logic. Lodge does well to illustrate that the erasure of God that preoccupies postmodern consciousness significantly affects contemporary conceptions about “subject formation” and “people in relation.” Lodge develops these themes by constructing a narrative that mirrors both the theological trajectory of Balthasar's tripartite program and the existential progression identified by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard—namely, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious “stages” of human experience. Importantly, a close consideration of Kierkegaard's stages reveals a direct analogy with the transcendentals, which, in turn, illuminates one of the many reasons why Balthasar admired Kierkegaard and why Lodge's novel is a fertile literary example of Balthasar's Theologic. By a close consideration of the triadic structure of being presented by a variety of sources, the chapter begins to discern how God's logic—how human logic—exists in a trinitarian dynamic.
Russell Daylight
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641970
- eISBN:
- 9780748671564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and ...
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Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and published as the Course in General Linguistics. And in the last 100 years, there has been no more influential and divisive reading of Saussure than that of Jacques Derrida. This book is an examination of Derrida's philosophical reconstruction of Saussurean linguistics, of the paradigm shift from structuralism to post-structuralism, and of the consequences that continue to resonate in every field of the humanities today. Despite the importance of Derrida's critique of Saussure for cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics and literary theory, this book presents the first analysis. The magnitude of the task undertaken here makes this book a resource for those wishing to interrogate the encounter beyond appearances or received wisdom. In this process of a close reading, the following themes become sites of debate between Derrida and Saussure: the originality of Saussure within the history of Western metaphysics; the relationship between speech and writing; the relationship between différance and difference; the intervention of time in structuralism; linguistic relativism and the role of the language user. This commentary also poses new questions to structuralism and post-structuralism, and opens up new terrain in linguistic and political thought.Less
Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and published as the Course in General Linguistics. And in the last 100 years, there has been no more influential and divisive reading of Saussure than that of Jacques Derrida. This book is an examination of Derrida's philosophical reconstruction of Saussurean linguistics, of the paradigm shift from structuralism to post-structuralism, and of the consequences that continue to resonate in every field of the humanities today. Despite the importance of Derrida's critique of Saussure for cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics and literary theory, this book presents the first analysis. The magnitude of the task undertaken here makes this book a resource for those wishing to interrogate the encounter beyond appearances or received wisdom. In this process of a close reading, the following themes become sites of debate between Derrida and Saussure: the originality of Saussure within the history of Western metaphysics; the relationship between speech and writing; the relationship between différance and difference; the intervention of time in structuralism; linguistic relativism and the role of the language user. This commentary also poses new questions to structuralism and post-structuralism, and opens up new terrain in linguistic and political thought.
Kevin Korsyn
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195104547
- eISBN:
- 9780199868988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195104547.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter argues that the present crisis confronting musical scholarship needs something like an antimethod that will ask how current methods work by examining their enabling conditions. Given the ...
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This chapter argues that the present crisis confronting musical scholarship needs something like an antimethod that will ask how current methods work by examining their enabling conditions. Given the deadlock between opposing groups, and the impasses at which debates repeatedly seem to stall, it recommends starting at the impasses to see how they arise. Rather than build another tower, or another pyramid of truth, it seeks to occupy the space between existing structures, to inhabit the shadows, to map the labyrinth. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.Less
This chapter argues that the present crisis confronting musical scholarship needs something like an antimethod that will ask how current methods work by examining their enabling conditions. Given the deadlock between opposing groups, and the impasses at which debates repeatedly seem to stall, it recommends starting at the impasses to see how they arise. Rather than build another tower, or another pyramid of truth, it seeks to occupy the space between existing structures, to inhabit the shadows, to map the labyrinth. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.
Kevin Korsyn
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195104547
- eISBN:
- 9780199868988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195104547.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter begins with a discussion of what constitutes the identity of composition. It then examines four ways of construing the issue of unity in the Preludes: the Preludes a monads, the Preludes ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of what constitutes the identity of composition. It then examines four ways of construing the issue of unity in the Preludes: the Preludes a monads, the Preludes as nomads, the Preludes as cryptocycle, and the Preludes as an ironic or paradoxical cycle. Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony are discussed.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of what constitutes the identity of composition. It then examines four ways of construing the issue of unity in the Preludes: the Preludes a monads, the Preludes as nomads, the Preludes as cryptocycle, and the Preludes as an ironic or paradoxical cycle. Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony are discussed.
Derek B. Scott
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195151961
- eISBN:
- 9780199870394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151961.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter discusses the construction of the sacred in music by way of a study of the composer Bruckner, chosen because he is widely seen as a “pure” musician, impervious to ideological assault. It ...
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This chapter discusses the construction of the sacred in music by way of a study of the composer Bruckner, chosen because he is widely seen as a “pure” musician, impervious to ideological assault. It becomes clear, however, that he often makes musical choices with reference to Christian religious discourse and thus for ideological rather than structural reasons. The chapter examines the usefulness of a “darkness and light” trope for understanding the compositional process in his music. The strategy is: (1) to establish the sacred character of Bruckner's music and show how he inherits religious signifiers for darkness and light; (2) to show how he uses these signifiers; (3) to explore the appropriateness of the darkness/light trope; and (4) to put forward a theory of “transfiguration of themes”. It affords an opportunity to import ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as to draw on Jacques Derrida's anti-dialectical arguments.Less
This chapter discusses the construction of the sacred in music by way of a study of the composer Bruckner, chosen because he is widely seen as a “pure” musician, impervious to ideological assault. It becomes clear, however, that he often makes musical choices with reference to Christian religious discourse and thus for ideological rather than structural reasons. The chapter examines the usefulness of a “darkness and light” trope for understanding the compositional process in his music. The strategy is: (1) to establish the sacred character of Bruckner's music and show how he inherits religious signifiers for darkness and light; (2) to show how he uses these signifiers; (3) to explore the appropriateness of the darkness/light trope; and (4) to put forward a theory of “transfiguration of themes”. It affords an opportunity to import ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as to draw on Jacques Derrida's anti-dialectical arguments.
Miriam Leonard (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199545544
- eISBN:
- 9780191720598
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199545544.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Written by Derrida scholars, philosophers, and classicists, this book analyses a dialogue with the ancient world in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Through an ...
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Written by Derrida scholars, philosophers, and classicists, this book analyses a dialogue with the ancient world in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of Derrida's work it explores the relationship between modern philosophy and Plato, the role ancient concepts of democracy have played in modern political debates, and the place of antiquity in contemporary discussions about Europe, as well as investigating the influence that deconstruction has had on the study of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and early religion. The volume is prefaced by a previously untranslated essay by Derrida, ‘We Other Greeks’.Less
Written by Derrida scholars, philosophers, and classicists, this book analyses a dialogue with the ancient world in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of Derrida's work it explores the relationship between modern philosophy and Plato, the role ancient concepts of democracy have played in modern political debates, and the place of antiquity in contemporary discussions about Europe, as well as investigating the influence that deconstruction has had on the study of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and early religion. The volume is prefaced by a previously untranslated essay by Derrida, ‘We Other Greeks’.
