The Resistance to Theory

by Paul De Man

The title essay in this book does not engage in a debate with the polemical opponents of literary theory; to Paul de Man, the resistance to theory is inherent in the theoretical enterprise itself, and the real debate is with its own methodological assumptions and possibilities. The core of his argument in this essay (and in those that follow) lies in the old opposition between theoria and aesthesis - terms that embody, on the one hand, a linguistic, specifically rhetorical approach to literature and, on the other, a phenomenological, aesthetic, or hermeneutic approach - and all the implications those two modes carry with them. The resistance to theory, says de Man, is a resistance to the use of language about language; it is a resistance to reading, and a resistance to the rhetorical or figurative dimensions of language.
The six related essays in The Resistance to Theory were written by de Man in the few years that preceded his death in December 1983. Undertaken to find out why the theoretical enterprise is blind to, or "resists," the radical nature of reading, the essays share not only a theme but also the pedagogical intent that is central to most of his work. These concerns, implicit in the title essay, are openly argued in "The Return to Philology." Each of the remaining essays is devoted to a specific theorist: Michael Riffaterre, Hans Robert Jauss, Walter Benjamin, and Mikhail Bakhtin. The Resistance to Theory also includes a 1983 interview with de Man conducted for Italian radio, and a complete bibliography of his work. Wlad Godzich's foreword tells how de Man's late work was conceived and organized for publication, and discusses some of the basic terms in his discourse.

"Indispensable. . . . There is resistance to 'theory' and also confusion about its status with reference to both philosophy and criticism. De Man's defense of theory is subtle but uncompromising, and highly personal in its 'aporetic' conclusion."

- Frank Kermode, Columbia University

Paul de Man was Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His books include Blindness and Insight (1971; revised edition, Minnesota, 1983), Allegories of Reading ( 1980), and The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1984).

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Criticism

137 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1986

About the author

Paul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.

He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s. He then taught at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Zurich, before ending up on the faculty in French and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he was considered part of the Yale School of deconstruction.

At the time of his death from cancer, he was Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale. After his death, the discovery of some two hundred articles he wrote during World War II for collaborationist newspapers, including one explicitly anti-Semitic, caused a scandal and provoked a reconsideration of his life and work. De Man oversaw the dissertations of both Gayatri Spivak and Barbara Johnson.

Reviews

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two things.

One: Wlad Godzich is a deft hand at the gloriously helpful introduction. Read the man, love the man, hate the man, whatever, he'll still have written a capable, understandable, and suitably wide-ranging introduction for a book few others could tackle with the same friendly acumen.

Two: fuck the haters, Paul de Man knocks it out of the park. End of story.

[Tauan Belchior · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A literatura é 'ficção' não porque de algum modo se negue a aceitar 'a realidade', mas porque não é certo, a priori, que a linguagem funcione segundo princípios que são os do mundo fenomenal ou que são como eles. Portanto, não é certo, a priori, que a literatura seja uma fonte de informações fiáveis acerca de outra coisa que não seja sua própria linguagem. Assim, a resistência à teoria é uma resistência ao uso da linguagem sobre a linguagem, o que quer dizer, à possibilidade de que a linguagem expresse mais, que não se reduza ao plano de expressão daquilo que é apenas intuitivo."

[Burcu]

TOC

Foreword: The Tiger on the Paper Mat Wlad Godzich ix
The Resistance to Theory 3
The Return to Philology 21
Hypogram and Inscription 27
Reading and History 54
"Conclusions": Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator" 73
Dialogue and Dialogism 106
An Interview with Paul de Man Stefano Rosso 115
Bibliography of Texts by Paul de Man Tom Keenan 122
Index 131

[Egor xS · Rating 4 out of 5]

from the glorious days of literary criticism.