Showing papers in "Diacritics in 1990"
TL;DR: In this article, the Genesis of Hermeneutics is discussed, with a focus on the repetition and Kinesis of the original Genesis of Metaphysics, and the Emancipation of Signs and the Dispatches from Being.
Abstract: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction: Restoring Life to Its Original Difficulty Part One: Repetition and the Genesis of Hermeneutics CHAPTER I. Repetition and Kinesis: Kierkegaard on the Foundering of Metaphysics CHAPTER II. Repetition and Constitution: HusserlOs Proto-Hermeneutics CHAPTER III. Retrieval and the Circular Being of Dasein: Hermeneutics in Being and Time Part Two: Deconstruction and the Radicalization of Hermeneutics CHAPTER IV. Hermeneutics after Being and Time CHAPTER V. Repetition and the Emancipation of Signs: Derrida on Husserl CHAPTER VI. Hermes and the Dispatches from Being: Derrida on Heidegger CHAPTER VII. Cold Hermeneutics: Heidegger/Derrida Part Three: The Hermenuatic Project CHAPTER VIII. Toward a Postmetaphysical Rationality CHAPTER IX. Toward an Ethics of Dissemination CHAPTER X. Openess to the Mystery List of Abbreviations Notes Index
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TL;DR: Kierkegaard published Repetition in 1843; his pseudonym this time was Constantin Constantius as mentioned in this paper, who made fun of this problematic in a sort of appendix, where he turns to "the real reader of this book," called "Mr. X, Esq."1 This real and ideal reader is apparently not a critic or an "ordinary reviewer," since such a specimen would have taken the opportunity to "elucidate that it is not a comedy, tragedy, novel, epic, epigram, story and to find it inexcusable that one tries in vain
Abstract: Kierkegaard published Repetition in 1843; his pseudonym this time was Constantin Constantius. The Danish title is Gjentagelsen, meaning literally "the taking back." It is not easy to decide what sort of text this is: a narration or a philosophical essay or perhaps an ironic mixture of both. Kierkegaard has Constantin make fun of this problematic in a sort of appendix, where he turns to "the real reader of this book," called "Mr. X, Esq."1 This real and ideal reader is apparently not a critic or an "ordinary reviewer," since such a specimen would have taken the opportunity to "elucidate that it is not a comedy, tragedy, novel, epic, epigram, story and to find it inexcusable that one tries in vain to say 1.2.3. Its ways he will hardly understand since they are inverse; nor will the effort of the book appeal to him, for as arule reviewers explain existence in such a way that both the universal and the particular are annihilated" [190/226]. This is said in the final pages, retrospectively, like a "repetition" to remind the reader-"Mr. X"-in what way and genre he has notread and, perhaps, to hint at a failed dialectic ("tries in vain to say 1.2.3."). And that the "ways" of the text are "inverse." "Inverse"?
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TL;DR: The Paul de Man "scandal" as discussed by the authors relates to what de Man did and wrote in the early 1940s in occupied Belgium and what American academics and journalists have done with these early writings in the late 1980s, once they became public knowledge.
Abstract: There are two different aspects in what has become the Paul de Man "scandal." One of them relates to what de Man did and wrote in the early 1940s in occupied Belgium; the other to what American academics and journalists have done with these early writings in the late 1980s, once they became public knowledge. These are two entirely different matters, and I will make a point of treating them separately. About the first aspect there is not too much to say except to refer to the description of the facts to be found in Edouard Colinet's contribution to Responses, a clear account that considerably helps to introduce some common sense in a matter which has been the locus of all kinds of vociferous and hysterical distortions. The facts are clear enough. Paul de Man was not either a fascist or an anti-Semite. Before the war he was linked to the Cercle du libre examen, in which no rightist students participated, and concerning his publishing in Le soir during the occupation, all witnesses agree that it was no act of ideological identification, but resulted entirely from his need to ensure a livelihood for his family. As for the only anti-Semitic piece that he wrote during his period of collaboration with Le soir, Colinet asserts the following:
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TL;DR: In this article, the reader is made to lean closer to the page: here it comes! We can think of other such points in works of criticism where analytic questioning is, for a moment, made to feel like a quest-narrative, the critic pausing to invite the reader to share a sense of mounting anticipation.
Abstract: Late inAllegories of Reading, towards the end of his chapter on the Social Contract, Paul de Man writes, "We have moved closer and closer to the 'definition' of text, the entity we are trying to circumscribe" [AR 268], and many of his readers must lean closer to the page: here it comes! We can think of other such points in works of criticism where analytic questioning is, for a moment, made to feel like a quest-narrative, the critic pausing to invite the reader to share a sense of mounting anticipation, of getting "closer and closer." There is Maurice Blanchot, on the opening page of L'espace litteraire [EL 5], gesturing at what he takes to be the region towards which his writing is moving, the pages on the gaze of Orpheus, on Orpheus's trip to the Underworld, his climb upward and then his turning to look back at Eurydice. Those pages have been frequently cited in recent years. Less familiar is an oddly apposite moment in William Empson's writing, another descent into Hell towards another woman. He is beginning his entry into the zone of maximum-that is, Type 7-ambiguity and has been discussing what Freud called the antithetical sense of primal words, citing Freud on how the primitive Egyptians used the same sign for "young" and "old."' Now he catches himself up, mock-apologetically, grants that all this talk about the Egyptians is "in some degree otiose," and writes:
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TL;DR: The work of Paul de Man has not become any easier to assimilate over the last ten years as discussed by the authors, despite the visible rigor of the methodology, the prestige and relative power that de Man himself was able to achieve, the cultural force of certain notions of comparative literature, theory, European philosophy, and so on.
Abstract: Over the last ten years, the work of Paul de Man has not become any easier to assimilate. Frank Lentricchia could not have been more wide of the mark when in 1983 he predicted that the "war between traditionalists and deconstructors" would "draw to a close by the end of this decade," with de Man "rediscovered as the most brilliant hero of traditionalism" [39]. For even if de Man's juvenile contributions to Le soir had remained hidden a few more years in the archive, it is clear that Lentricchia would have lost his wager. The furor over de Man's wartime journalism has at least had the virtue of making manifest the extraordinary violence with which his mature work is resisted. Doubtless, a measure of institutional success continues to attend "de Manian" criticism. It would be astounding if this were not the case, given the visible rigor of the methodology, the prestige and relative power that de Man himself was able to achieve, the cultural force of certain notions of comparative literature, theory, European philosophy, and so on. As a rule, however, contemporary criticism quarantines and ignores de Manian theory by way of various hegemonic strategies of inclusive exclusion, supplemented by extravagant gestures of anthropomorphization and rejection. One could with considerable justice invert Lentricchia's formulations and claim that the most significant realignments of institutional power in literary studies during the 1980s amount to wholehearted approval of the rhetoric of Criticism and Social Change. Nothing, it seems, is more obvious than the political inadequacy of de Man's texts. The task of pursuing some form of "historicism" has taken on the self-evident necessity of an ethical imperative. "It is a fact," de Man wrote in 1972, "that this sort of thing happens, again and again, in literary studies" [AR 4]. What happens perhaps a little more rarely in literary studies is the event of an exemplary figure such as de Man, capable of inspiring the most lurid gestures of monumentalization and ritual sacrifice. The pages that follow seek to articulate de Man's theoretical text with the politics of his reception and with the question of politics. I shall be pursuing the notions of history and politics that inform de Man's late texts, mounting
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TL;DR: In "The Age of the World Picture" as mentioned in this paper, Martin Heidegger questions what is science and what is the essence of science, and the answer is that it is the discovery of a world to which methods and rules may appropriately be developed and applied.
Abstract: In "The Age of the World Picture," Martin Heidegger questions a question dear to students of politics in twentieth-century America: What is science? The "essence" of modem science, Heidegger says, is "research." In scientific research, "knowing [das Erkennen] establishes itself as a procedure" [118]. Yet research for Heidegger is not, as this statement seems to imply, limited to following a method or rule. Rather, the fundamental accomplishment of science (an accomplishment that, despite the latter's ideological understanding of itself, links science to the completion of Western metaphysics) is the invention of a world to which methods and rules may appropriately be developed and applied. This world, once established, appears as "fixed," "sketche[d] out in advance." This does not mean that much about it is known in advance, but that the basic character of the world is predefined so as to make the scientific procedure used to approach it seem rigorously appropriate: there is a "binding adherence [Bindung]" between the object of inquiry and the practices of the inquiring subject [ 119]. These two moments of scientific