Blindness and Insight

Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism

Paul de Man

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138172821
• eBook ISBN: 9781135855031
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In Blindness and Insight , de Man examines several critics and finds in their writings a gap between their statements about the nature of literature and the results of their practical criticism. Not only are the critics unaware of this gap, says de Man, but their blindness to it often leads to some of their most valuable insights. The central issue of de Man's work is the rhetorical constitution of the text, and this book, with its new introduction by Wlad Godzich and five additional essays by de Man, is meant to challenge readers to a new appreciation of their chosen task as readers of literature. Included in this new edition are the original essays on Binswanger, Poulet, Lukas, Blanchot, the New Critics, and Derrida's `of Grammatology', as well as five more: `The Rhetoric of Temporality', `The Dead-End of Formalist Criticism', `Heidegger's Exegesis of Holderlin', a review of Bloom's `Anxiety of Influence, and `Literature and Language'.

Index

Index by Terry Cochran.

A la recherche du temps perdu, 98–99

Abrams, Meyer, 28, 170, 173, 182, 268, 269; on romanticism, 194–97, 205–6

Act, constitutive. See Constitution; Intentionality

Adam, Antoine, 281n

Adolphe, 83

Aesthetic experience, and conception of the present, 156–57

Aesthetics: vs. logic and ethics, 41–43; in nineteenth century, 191; and symbol valorization, 188–89

Ästhetik, 52

Air et les songes, L', 46

Akenside, Mark, 195

Alastor, 270

Alienation: event of, 120; in ontological problematic, 69, 240–41; vs. unified nature, 54–55. See also Estrangement

Allegory: as decipherable sign, 188–89, 191–92; defined by Benjamin, 35, 173–74; linked to irony, 208–9, 222–28; as mapping of signs, 132–33, 173–76, 182, 185–186; for Schlegel, 190–91; structure of, 225; vs. subject-object dialectic, 204–5, 208; vs. symbol, 171, 187–208, 209, 211; temporal character of, 135–36, 160–61, 207

Alleman, Beda, 248, 254n; Heidegger and Hölderlin study of, 264–66

Alonso, Dámaso, 21

Also Sprach Zarathustra, 141

Ambiguity: as constitutive of poetry, 236; vs. contradiction, 244; and division of Being, 237

American criticism: response of, to crisis rhetoric, 5–6. See also Formalist criticism; New Criticism

Analogy. See Metaphor; Symbol

Anatomy of Criticism, 25

Anaximander, 252

Ancients and Moderns, quarrel of: and literature-modernity relation, 153–56

“Andenken,” 254n

Anxiety of Influence, The, 267–76

Apophrades, 274–75

Apparent, the: as sign's materiality, xxiv–xxvii. See also Appearance; Materiality

Appearance: as Erscheinung vs. Bedeutung, 23; as essence, 132; and New Critic rejection of intention, 27; as Schein-Idee unity, 12–13. See also Apparent, the; Materiality; Sensation; Sign

“Archaic Torso of Apollo,” 34

Aristotle, 209

Art: and knowledge of falling, 48–49; as mimetic, 126; vs. nature, 202; and necessity of the immediate, 217–18, 237

Artaud, Antonin, 147–48, 152, 161–62

Articulation. See Language

Askesis, 274–75

Assertion. See Statement

Athenäum, 221

Attente l'oubli, L', 67

Auerbach, Erich, 21, 53, 171, 191; western literature cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Foreword to Revised, Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Caution! Reader at Work!
• I Criticism and Crisis
• II Form and Intent in the American New Criticism
• III Ludwig Binswanger and the Sublimation of the Self
• IV Georg Lukác's Theory of the Novel
• V Impersonality in the Criticism of Maurice Blanchot
• VI The Literary Self as Origin: The Work of Georges Poulet
• VII The Rhetoric of Blindness: Jacques Derrida's Reading of Rousseau
• VIII Literary History and Literary Modernity
• IX Lyric and Modernity
• X The Rhetoric of Temporality
• XI The Dead-End of Formalist Criticism
• XII Heidegger's Exegeses of Hölderlin
• Appendix A: Review of Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence
• Appendix B: Literature and Language: A Commentary
• Index