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Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy
Saving the Text cuts through Jacques Derrida's complex blend of philosophy, commentary, and elaborate wordplay to ascertain his place in the history of criticism and the significance of Glas as a literary event. Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American scholarship and establishes its relevance to the division that has arisen between European and Anglo-American critical approaches.
- GenresPhilosophy
216 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1981
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71 people want to read
About the author
Geoffrey H. Hartman
56 books9 followersFrom NYT obituary: Geoffrey H. Hartman, a literary critic whose work took in the Romantic poets, Judaic sacred texts, Holocaust studies, deconstruction and the workings of memory — and took on the very function of criticism itself — died on March 14 at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 86.
His death was announced by Yale University, where he was the Sterling professor emeritus of English and comparative literature.
Considered one of the world’s foremost scholars of literature, Professor Hartman was associated with the “Yale School,” a cohort of literary theorists that included Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller and Paul de Man. Their work was rooted in deconstruction, the approach to analyzing the multilayered relationship between a text and its meaning that was advanced by the 20th-century French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Professor Hartman was renowned for his vast Continental erudition. His scholarly attention ranged over Wordsworth, to whom he was long devoted; the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Judaica (he helped found the Judaic studies program at Yale); Alfred Hitchcock; Freud; detective stories; and the nature of trauma, the memory of trauma and testimony about trauma — interests borne of his own wartime experience — as well as the ways in which traumatic recollections can be filtered through the creative imagination.
Among his best-known books are “Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787-1814” (1964); “Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today” (1980), considered a landmark in the field; “The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust” (1996); and a memoir, “A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe” (2007).
He was the first director of what is now the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale. Begun in 1979, the archive, which is open to the public, comprises more than 4,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators from around the world.
As a result of his association with the Yale School, Professor Hartman was often called a deconstructionist, but his critical stance eluded tidy classification.
Deconstruction maintains that any given text is, below its surface, a roiling system of conflicting semantic signs. As such, the text has no one empirical reading; it is, rather, a network of competing meanings — a quicksilver state of affairs that a critical analysis of that text must take into account.
Early on, Professor Hartman championed this approach. But over time he went deconstruction one better, arguing that a literary text is so pregnant with possible readings that to make an evaluative judgment about it — or even, perhaps, to extract an inventory of its meanings — is futile.
By longstanding tradition, as Professor Hartman reminded his readers, literary criticism was seen as a handmaiden of literature — an adjunct whose sole raison d’être was literature itself.
In “Criticism in the Wilderness,” he argued that criticism should not only stand on an equal footing with literature but also be literature. (Classifying criticism as literature inevitably triggers a hall-of-mirrors effect, the kind of Talmudic paradox that was to Professor Hartman a source of unalloyed delight: If criticism becomes literature, it is thus amenable to critical analysis. How, then, does one classify the criticism that results?)
In elevating criticism to the status of literature, Professor Hartman did not mean merely that it should be well written. What he also meant was that criticism should function for criticism’s sake alone.
“The spectacle of the critic’s mind disoriented, bewildered, caught in some ‘wild surmise’ about the text and struggling to adjust — is not that one of the interests critical writing has for us?” he wrote in “Criticism in the Wilderness.”
He continued: “In more casual acts of reading this bewilderment can be muted, for there is always the hint of a resolution further on, or an enticement to enter for its own
His death was announced by Yale University, where he was the Sterling professor emeritus of English and comparative literature.
Considered one of the world’s foremost scholars of literature, Professor Hartman was associated with the “Yale School,” a cohort of literary theorists that included Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller and Paul de Man. Their work was rooted in deconstruction, the approach to analyzing the multilayered relationship between a text and its meaning that was advanced by the 20th-century French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Professor Hartman was renowned for his vast Continental erudition. His scholarly attention ranged over Wordsworth, to whom he was long devoted; the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Judaica (he helped found the Judaic studies program at Yale); Alfred Hitchcock; Freud; detective stories; and the nature of trauma, the memory of trauma and testimony about trauma — interests borne of his own wartime experience — as well as the ways in which traumatic recollections can be filtered through the creative imagination.
Among his best-known books are “Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787-1814” (1964); “Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today” (1980), considered a landmark in the field; “The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust” (1996); and a memoir, “A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe” (2007).
He was the first director of what is now the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale. Begun in 1979, the archive, which is open to the public, comprises more than 4,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators from around the world.
As a result of his association with the Yale School, Professor Hartman was often called a deconstructionist, but his critical stance eluded tidy classification.
Deconstruction maintains that any given text is, below its surface, a roiling system of conflicting semantic signs. As such, the text has no one empirical reading; it is, rather, a network of competing meanings — a quicksilver state of affairs that a critical analysis of that text must take into account.
Early on, Professor Hartman championed this approach. But over time he went deconstruction one better, arguing that a literary text is so pregnant with possible readings that to make an evaluative judgment about it — or even, perhaps, to extract an inventory of its meanings — is futile.
By longstanding tradition, as Professor Hartman reminded his readers, literary criticism was seen as a handmaiden of literature — an adjunct whose sole raison d’être was literature itself.
In “Criticism in the Wilderness,” he argued that criticism should not only stand on an equal footing with literature but also be literature. (Classifying criticism as literature inevitably triggers a hall-of-mirrors effect, the kind of Talmudic paradox that was to Professor Hartman a source of unalloyed delight: If criticism becomes literature, it is thus amenable to critical analysis. How, then, does one classify the criticism that results?)
In elevating criticism to the status of literature, Professor Hartman did not mean merely that it should be well written. What he also meant was that criticism should function for criticism’s sake alone.
“The spectacle of the critic’s mind disoriented, bewildered, caught in some ‘wild surmise’ about the text and struggling to adjust — is not that one of the interests critical writing has for us?” he wrote in “Criticism in the Wilderness.”
He continued: “In more casual acts of reading this bewilderment can be muted, for there is always the hint of a resolution further on, or an enticement to enter for its own
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 25, 2023
I admire Hartman for his writing and his clear elucidation of Derrida. Yet, I found myself disinterested in this book. I bought it while in graduate school but didn’t have time to read it. Now, ten years removed from that world, I kept finding myself just simply not caring. Funny how life does that to you. I just kept going why read Hartman when I should be reading…knowing I won’t ever write a paper to an academic crowd, I would rather read something else. The poets, novelists, and philosophers, and not some critic commenting on them.
August 22, 2015
Have avoided reading this landmark critical text, because my continental masters categorically dismiss it as a facile misreading of Derrida, et al.
Now I see why they so abhor it. Hartman is a deeper, more sophisticated thinker and a far, far superior writer than his European belittlers. This was one of the more engaging, rewarding books I've read in recent memory.
Now I see why they so abhor it. Hartman is a deeper, more sophisticated thinker and a far, far superior writer than his European belittlers. This was one of the more engaging, rewarding books I've read in recent memory.
July 27, 2013
A brief note: The text itself is clear enough to follow and definitely easier than tackling Derrida and Glas itself... but beware of lots of untranslated passages and phrases in French.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews