Posts

Re Addressing the Ethical

By Dawne McCance

Subjects: Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Postmodern Culture
Paperback : 9780791430026, 169 pages, July 1996
Hardcover : 9780791430019, 169 pages, July 1996

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Table of contents

Introduction: On Postmodernism and the Impossibility of Ethics

Part One

1. Deconstruction's Delirium: Ethics in Errant
2. Arrive-t-il?

Part Two

3. Soulmortality: Speaking of Love
4. L'Ecriture limite: Discourse of a Crisis in Identity

Part Three

5. Comings and Goings: Foucault's Catachresis

Notes

Works Cited

Index

An innovative study of deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and genealogy, relating the ethical to the problematic of the text as a post or a sending in the work of Derrida, Lyotard, Lacan, Kristeva, and Foucault, and phrasing the ethical as the questions of how to read and write after.

Description

Posts is a collection of original essays that relate the ethical to the problematic of the text as a post or a sending in the work of Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault. What brings these diverse thinkers together here is the suggestion that something ethical happens (il arrive) through the text only if it is not a self-presentation. The book's innovative studies of deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and genealogy phrase the ethical as the question of how to read and write after without either a decidable sender or a predetermined addressee. The collection will be of interest to all those concerned with ethics and with the ethical implications of recent developments in literary criticism, postmodern theory, psychoanalysis, architecture, feminism, philosophy, and religious studies.

Dawne McCance is Associate Professor at St. John's College, Winnipeg, Canada.

Reviews

"McCance has a sure grasp of not only the primary texts with which she is working, but also of much of the relevant secondary literature. Her introduction does an excellent job of explaining both how and why the American culture industry has tended to domesticate the writings of contemporary French poststructuralists by linking them to the monolithic idea of the 'postmodern.' Many people working in continental philosophy, feminism, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism will be interested in reading this concise and elegant book." — Andrew Cutrofello, Loyola University

"I am overwhelmed by the readings of the principle philosophers. I feel as if my reading of Derrida is immeasurably improved because of McCance's careful reading. 'Beginning' with him and tacitly ending with him—not just because of the final cite but because of the 'silent' return to apocalypse is brilliant. I love this book. My favorite sections are 'Autobiography' and 'Encore.' Marvelously written." — Alison Leigh Brown, Northern Arizona University