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Deconstruction*Derrida contests the notion that what Jacques Derrida does can be turned into a theory for literary interpretation. It also questions the idea that there is a critical methodology called deconstruction which can be applied to literary texts in a programmatic fashion. In this introductory study to the work of Jacques Derrida, Julian Wolfreys introduces the reader to a range of Derrida's interests and concerns, while offering readings, informed by Derrida's thought, of canonical and less well-known literary works.
List of contents
Series Preface
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART 1: THE MAKE-BELIEVE OF A BEGINNING
Another Introduction/Entamer
Preparatory to Anything Else: Derrida's Interests
PART 2: PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE: SINGULAR EXAMPLES OR, IDENTITY, SPECTRALITY, UNDECIDABILITY
Writing (of) Identities: Facing up to Derrida or, the example of Paul Valery
The Hauntological Example: the City as the Haunt of Writing in the Texts of Iain Sinclair
Heart? of Darkness? Reading in the Dark with J.Hillis Miller and Joseph Conrad
PART 3: SOME SUPPLEMENTARY AFTERWORD
Afterword(s): Contrary to the 'Logic of the Heading'
Annotated Bibliography
Bibliography
Index.
About the author
JULIAN WOLFREYS is Associate Professor in the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville. He is the author of Being English: Narratives, Idioms and Performances of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope and The Rhetoric of Affirmative Resistances: Dissonant Identities from Carroll to Derrida (also published by Macmillan). He has recently completed a study of representations of London.
Summary
Deconstruction - Derrida contests the notion that what Jacques Derrida does can be turned into a theory for literary interpretation. It also questions the idea that there is a critical methodology called deconstruction which can be applied to literary texts in a programmatic fashion. In this introductory study to the work of Jacques Derrida, Julian Wolfreys introduces the reader to a range of Derrida's interests and concerns, while offering readings, informed by Derrida's thought, of canonical and less well-known literary works.
