In light of the increasing politicization that can be observed within the discipline of American ... more In light of the increasing politicization that can be observed within the discipline of American Studies in the U.S.—with its focus on race, class and gender—and the neglect of matters aesthetic that more often than not accompanies this phenomenon, canonized modernist texts have been cast under something close to a general suspicion. This development, however, has to be seen in the larger context of academic politics, which is provided in François Cusset’s recent book French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life in the United States (2008). In it, he diagnoses a split of French post-structuralism into two camps: a school of apolitical textual deconstruction and one of re-politicization based upon identity politics. With the help of a new reading of William Faulkner’s short story “Dry September,” I will argue that this split is both artificial and questionable. I will show that, far from being historically irrelevant or purely mandarin, the aesthetic complexity of modernist texts does not forego but actively addresses (if in a demiurgic fashion) the dangers involved in readings motivated by political agendas such as race and gender.
Melville's enigmatic short story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', has puzzled critics and readers alike... more Melville's enigmatic short story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', has puzzled critics and readers alike ever since its publication in 1853. It has, however, recently received an even more puzzling amount of critical attention by the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, and Jacques Rancière. The essay argues that the approaches of the latter have to be considered in the light of what can be termed a 'metonymic poetics of community'. Read in this way, the hermetic figure of the copyist can be juxtaposed to Walt Whitman's notorious lists, as that which cannot be integrated into the omnivorous, imperial I/eye of the poet laureate of American democracy; as that which defies being sublated into a metaphoric conception of community.
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 2006
while . . . common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up a... more while . . . common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up at last; and . . . common dramas do but repeat the same; yet the profounder emanations of the human mind . . . never unravel their own intricacies, and have no proper endings; but in imperfect, unanticipated, and disappointing sequels (as mutilated stumps), hurry to abrupt intermergings with the eternal tides of time and fate. Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities
In light of the increasing politicization that can be observed within the discipline of American ... more In light of the increasing politicization that can be observed within the discipline of American Studies in the U.S.—with its focus on race, class and gender—and the neglect of matters aesthetic that more often than not accompanies this phenomenon, canonized modernist texts have been cast under something close to a general suspicion. This development, however, has to be seen in the larger context of academic politics, which is provided in François Cusset’s recent book French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life in the United States (2008). In it, he diagnoses a split of French post-structuralism into two camps: a school of apolitical textual deconstruction and one of re-politicization based upon identity politics. With the help of a new reading of William Faulkner’s short story “Dry September,” I will argue that this split is both artificial and questionable. I will show that, far from being historically irrelevant or purely mandarin, the aesthetic complexity of modernist texts does not forego but actively addresses (if in a demiurgic fashion) the dangers involved in readings motivated by political agendas such as race and gender.
Melville's enigmatic short story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', has puzzled critics and readers alike... more Melville's enigmatic short story 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', has puzzled critics and readers alike ever since its publication in 1853. It has, however, recently received an even more puzzling amount of critical attention by the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, and Jacques Rancière. The essay argues that the approaches of the latter have to be considered in the light of what can be termed a 'metonymic poetics of community'. Read in this way, the hermetic figure of the copyist can be juxtaposed to Walt Whitman's notorious lists, as that which cannot be integrated into the omnivorous, imperial I/eye of the poet laureate of American democracy; as that which defies being sublated into a metaphoric conception of community.
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 2006
while . . . common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up a... more while . . . common novels laboriously spin veils of mystery, only to complacently clear them up at last; and . . . common dramas do but repeat the same; yet the profounder emanations of the human mind . . . never unravel their own intricacies, and have no proper endings; but in imperfect, unanticipated, and disappointing sequels (as mutilated stumps), hurry to abrupt intermergings with the eternal tides of time and fate. Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities
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