Reading Deconstruction/Deconstructive ReadingDeconstruction—a mode of close reading associated with the contemporary philosopher Jacques Derrida and other members of the "Yale School"—is the current critical rage, and is likely to remain so for some time. Reading Deconstruction / Deconstructive Reading offers a unique, informed, and badly needed introduction to this important movement, written by one of its most sensitive and lucid practitioners. More than an introduction, this book makes a significant addition to the current debate in critical theory. G. Douglas Atkins first analyzes and explains deconstruction theory and practice. Focusing on such major critics and theorists as Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, and Geoffrey Hartman, he brings to the fore issues previously scanted in accounts of deconstruction, especially its religious implications. Then, through close readings of such texts as Religio Laici, A Tale of a Tub, and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, he proceeds to demonstrate and exemplify a mode of deconstruction indebted to both Derrida and Paul de Man. This skillfully organized book, designed to reflect the "both/ and" nature of deconstruction, thus makes its own contribution to deconstructive practice. The important readings provided of Dryden, Swift, and Pope are among the first to treat major Augustan texts from a deconstructive point of view and make the book a valuable addition to the study of that period. Well versed in deconstruction, the variety of texts he treats, and major issues of current concern in literary study, Atkins offers in this book a balanced and judicious defense of deconstruction that avoids being polemical, dogmatic, or narrowly ideological. Whereas much previous work on and in deconstruction has been notable for its thick prose, jargon, and general obfuscation, this book will be appreciated for its clarity and grace, as well as for its command of an impressively wide range of texts and issues. Without taming it as an instrument of analysis and potential change, Atkins makes deconstruction comprehensible to the general reader. His efforts will interest all those concerned with literary theory and criticism, Augustan literature, and the relation of literature and religion. |
From inside the book
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... signified, of literal and figurative, of performative and constative ever to catch up with one another and to coincide. As Miller says, deconstruction has to do with “the oscillations in meaning” that result from the figurative nature ...
... signified. In his own words, “The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. . . . the linguistic sign is arbitrary.”1 This is due to the differential character of language. Because the sign, phonic as well as graphic ...
... signified, Derrida puts such terms sous rature, that is, “under erasure.” He writes a word, crosses it out, and prints both word and deletion, for though the word is inaccurate it is necessary and must remain legible. This idea of sous ...
... plenitude, its possibility is by rights anterior to all that one calls sign (signified/signifier, content/expression, etc.), concept or operation, motor or sensory. This differance is therefore not more sensible than intelligible and it.
... signified, expression and content, etc.8 In claiming that “without a trace retaining the other as other in the same” difference could not do the work necessary for meaning to appear, Derrida unarguably goes well beyond Saussure. Indeed ...
Contents
The Recent Work | |
J Hillis Miller Deconstruction and the Recovery | |
The Story of Error | |
The Question of Interpretive | |
Will and Willing in A Tale | |
The Play of Difference in Popes | |