Description
Book SynopsisWhat is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? Derek Attridge argues that the challenge of Derrida''s work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met, and in this book, which traces a close engagement with Derrida''s writing over two decades and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, shows how that work can illuminate a variety of topics.
Chapters include an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida''s philosophy as ''radical atheism'', and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabaté.
Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida''s own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; List of Illustrations; Deleuze and Guattari and Contemporary Art: An Introduction, Simon O'Sullivan and Stephen Zepke; I - Politics; 1. The Politics of the Scream in a Threnody, Gustavo Chirolla Ospina; 2. A Shift Towards the Unnameable, Suely Rolnik; 3. The Heterogenesis of Fleeing, Gerald Raunig; 4. Anita Fricek: Contemporary Painting as Institutional Critique, Stephen Zepke; II - The Aesthetic Paradigm; 5. Capitalism and Schizophrenia and Consensus. Of Relational Aesthetics, Eric Alliez; 6. The Practice and Anti-dialectical Thought of an 'Anartist', Maurizio Lazzarato; 7. Ethologies of Software Art: What Can a Digital Body of Code Do?, Jussi Parikka, 8. Fractal Philosophy (and the small matter of learning how to listen): Attunement as the Task of Art, Johnny Golding; III - Scenes and Encounters; 9. An Art Scene as Big as the Ritz: the Logic of Scenes, David Burrows; 10. Abstract Humour, Humorous Abstraction, Robert Garnett; 11. From Aesthetics to the Abstract Machine: Deleuze, Guattari, and Contemporary Art Practice, Simon O'Sullivan; 12. Traps Against Capture, Edgar Schmitz; IV - Technologies; 13. Sign and Information: on Anestis Logothetis' Graphical Notations, Claudia Mongini; 14. Anti-Electra: Totemism and Schizogamy, Elisabeth von Samsonow; 15. Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition, Barbara Bolt; 16. BLOODCRYSTALPOLLENSTAR, Neil Chapman and Ola Stahl; Notes on Contributors; Index.
