Post-Structuralism and the Question of History

Cambridge University Press, 5/11/1989
EAN 9780521367806, ISBN10: 0521367808

Paperback, 304 pages, 21.8 x 13.6 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

Recent developments in literary theory (such as structuralism and deconstruction) have come under attack for ignoring history, while historically based approaches have been criticised for failing to take account of the problems inherent in their methodological foundations. This collection of essays is unique in focusing on this central debate in literary studies today: the relation between post-structuralist and historical (especially Marxist) literary theory and criticism. The volume includes a deconstructive reading of Marx, essays which relate history to the philosophical and institutional context, and a number of studies of particular texts, literary theory with particular force.

Introduction
posing the question Geoff Bennington and Robert Young
Part I. History, Marxism and the Institution
1. Demanding history Geoff Bennington
2. Speculations on reading Marx
after reading Derrida Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
3. Texts in history
the determinations of readings and their texts Tony Bennett
4. Criticism and institutions
the American university Jonathan Culler
Part II. Difference and History
5. History traces Marian Hobson
6. Derrida and Foucault
writing the history of historicity Ann Wordsworth
7. The practice of historical investigation Mark Cousins
Part III. Aesthetics and History
8. Of aesthetic and historical determination Rodolphe Gashé
9. The sign of history Jean-François Lyotard
Part IV. History as Text
10. Language as history/history as language
Saussure and the romance of etymology Derek Attridge
11. Fallen differences, phallogocentric discourses
losing Paradise Lost to history Mary Nyquist
12. Ezra Pound
the erasure of history Maud Ellmann
13. The phonograph in Africa
international phonocentrism from Stanley to Sarnoff William Pietz
Notes on the contributors
Index.