"In this densely imbricated volume Derrida pursues his devoted, relentless dismantling of the philosophical tradition, the tradition of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger--each dealt with in one or more of the essays. There are essays too on linguistics (Saussure, Benveniste, Austin) and on the nature of metaphor ("White Mythology"), the latter with important implications for literary theory. Derrida is fully in control of a dazzling stylistic register in this book--a source of true illumination for those prepared to follow his (...) arduous path. Bass is a superb translator and annotator. His notes on the multilingual allusions and puns are a great service."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)

Spivak engages general questions of theory; ongoing critical debates with political philosophers such as Habermas and Althusser, with psychoanalysts such as Kristeva, and with legal theorists such as Dworkin.

This work is the first history and evaluation of contemporary American critical theory within its European philosophical contexts. In the first part, Frank Lentricchia analyzes the impact on our critical thought of Frye, Stevens, Kermode, Sartre, Poulet, Heidegger, Sussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Derrida, and Foucault, among other, less central figures. In a second part, Lentricchia turns to four exemplary theorists on the American scene--Murray Krieger, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom--and an analysis of their careers within the (...) lineage established in part one. Lentricchia's critical intention is in evidence in his sustained attack on the more or less hidden formalist premises inherited from the New Critical fathers. Even in the name of historical consciousness, he contends, contemporary theorists have often cut literature off from social and temporal processes. By so doing he believes that they have deprived literature of its relevant values and turned the teaching of both literature and theory into a rarefied activity. All along the way, with the help of such diverse thinkers as Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Bloom, Lentricchia indicates a strategy by which future critical theorists may resist the mandarin attitudes of their fathers. (shrink)

Juger, c'est trouver l'exemple qui atteste la loi. Et, inversement, quand on n'a pas la loi d'abord, c'est imaginer la règle que recèle et qu'exige le cas. Le juge dispose d'un code, le cas à juger y est traité. L'arrêt se termine alors, en principe, par application de l'un à l'autre. Mais en fait le juge doit encore juger que le cas est bien tel cas prévu par le code. Ou pire, si le cas n'y est pas traité, le juge (...) doit en juger sans règle préétablie, et son jugement peut faire jurisprudence. Cette "prudence" est la vertu de se bien guider sans boussole. Avant l'institution. Déboussolés autant et plus que nous le sommes, six philosophes examinent ici comment juger quand la loi manque. L'occasion leur en est donnée par les écrits de l'un deux, Lyotard, lors d'un colloque à Cerisy en 1982. Le présent titre fait allusion à Kant. La force de juger ne fait pas seulement l'objet de la critique, elle est ce qui tend son ressort. Elle s'exerce et se réfléchit dans l'éthique et la politique, dans l'évaluation pratique ou esthétique, dans l'invention littéraire, scientifique, artistique. Elle est peut-être toute l'énergie du philosophe, sa faiblesse invincible. (shrink)

This last work by Paul de Man before his death in 1983 brings together what is essentially his complete work on the study of European Romanticism and post-Romanticism.

A tribute to one of the fathers of deconstruction as well as an extended essay on memory, death, and friendship.

Published in France as La jeune nee in 1975, and now translated for the first time into English, The Newly Born Woman seeks to uncover the veiled structures of language and society that have situated women in the position called 'woman's place.'.