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Persons and Things
Moving effortlessly between symbolist poetry and Barbie dolls, artificial intelligence and Kleist, Kant, and Winnicott, Barbara Johnson not only clarifies psychological and social dynamics; she also re-dramatizes the work of important tropes―without ever losing sight of the ethical imperative with which she the need to treat persons as persons.
In Persons and Things , Johnson turns deconstruction around to make a fundamental contribution to the new aesthetics. She begins with the most elementary thing we deconstruction calls attention to gaps and reveals that their claims upon us are fraudulent. Johnson revolutionizes the method by showing that the inanimate thing exposed as a delusion is central to fantasy life, that fantasy life, however deluded, should be taken seriously, and that although a work of art “is formed around something missing,” this “void is its vanishing point, not its essence.” She shows deftly and delicately that the void inside Keats’s urn, Heidegger’s jug, or Wallace Stevens’s jar forms the center around which we tend to organize our worlds.
The new aesthetics should restore fluidities between persons and things. In pursuing it, Johnson calls upon Ovid, Keats, Poe, Plath, and others who have inhabited this in-between space. The entire process operates via a subtlety that only a critic of Johnson’s caliber could reveal to us.
In Persons and Things , Johnson turns deconstruction around to make a fundamental contribution to the new aesthetics. She begins with the most elementary thing we deconstruction calls attention to gaps and reveals that their claims upon us are fraudulent. Johnson revolutionizes the method by showing that the inanimate thing exposed as a delusion is central to fantasy life, that fantasy life, however deluded, should be taken seriously, and that although a work of art “is formed around something missing,” this “void is its vanishing point, not its essence.” She shows deftly and delicately that the void inside Keats’s urn, Heidegger’s jug, or Wallace Stevens’s jar forms the center around which we tend to organize our worlds.
The new aesthetics should restore fluidities between persons and things. In pursuing it, Johnson calls upon Ovid, Keats, Poe, Plath, and others who have inhabited this in-between space. The entire process operates via a subtlety that only a critic of Johnson’s caliber could reveal to us.
272 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2008
4 people are currently reading
182 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Johnson
16 books10 followersLibrarian note: There are other authors with the same name
Barbara Johnson was an American literary critic and translator. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and feminist theory—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara...
Barbara Johnson was an American literary critic and translator. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and feminist theory—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 28, 2025
This was seriously fire. Sometimes she’d go on random tangents. I loved all the references. Really unique and interesting. Rip Barbara Johnson I’m excited to read more. Making me wanna be a literary critic type shi. Fuck I gotta take a linguistics class.
June 21, 2013
A fascinating study of our need for objects to make us as subjects.
January 22, 2026
Thank you Alina! A chance encounter on my twitter feed resulted in a very edifying reading experience!
Fascinating explorations of our relations to things and what that says about our relation to our own self-professed (or at the very least implicitly believed) personhood. Like Gender Trouble (I've only read like 5 scholarly books, give me a break), it is focused on gathering various perspectives and testing them against each other to adumbrate a theoretical space. It is yet another book which pushes me toward becoming a full-on Lacanian psychoanalyst. Regardless of how much I was able to actually glean from it (I'll be generous and say 40%), I think this is a must-read if you are interested in writing fiction or poetry.
Fascinating explorations of our relations to things and what that says about our relation to our own self-professed (or at the very least implicitly believed) personhood. Like Gender Trouble (I've only read like 5 scholarly books, give me a break), it is focused on gathering various perspectives and testing them against each other to adumbrate a theoretical space. It is yet another book which pushes me toward becoming a full-on Lacanian psychoanalyst. Regardless of how much I was able to actually glean from it (I'll be generous and say 40%), I think this is a must-read if you are interested in writing fiction or poetry.
March 9, 2010
This book is, if nothing else, kind of a mixed bag, shaggy dog kind of thing-- the first twenty five pages are fairly dense parsings of speech acts and what is the object and what the sentence of certain fairly difficult novel linguistic utterances. And then, a five page interp of the statue of liberty that reclaims the psychological joy we feel at returning to that cavernous metal womb, as an entree to the politics of the pro-life movement-- it's like that all through the book, though maybe never as stark after that first juxtaposition. Maybe it couldn't be....
In other words, alternating chapters I found to be taken up with pretty amazing readings of things I'd never considered seriously before, and then a chapter on speech acts that went right over my head. It's a really good book, but though I'm not smart enough to really develop this thought beyond simply claiming it, this isn't a book as much as it is a dare, a lark, a couple ideas too good to forget but not enough to make a really killer book from.
In other words, alternating chapters I found to be taken up with pretty amazing readings of things I'd never considered seriously before, and then a chapter on speech acts that went right over my head. It's a really good book, but though I'm not smart enough to really develop this thought beyond simply claiming it, this isn't a book as much as it is a dare, a lark, a couple ideas too good to forget but not enough to make a really killer book from.
September 23, 2010
This one was interesting, if not at times somewhat random. On the outset it appears to be separated by discussions of things, persons, things as persons, and persons as things. But it is complicated by discussions of language, philosophy, and social ideas. Some of the more memorable discussions include looks into today's society and the presence of computers, how it is sometimes advantageous to be more 'machine-like' and how we are both proud of our achievements in technology but relieved when those achievements can still be separated as missing something of the essence of humanity. The discussion of real dolls and animation was fantastic.
This book is a mix of theory, philosophy, literature and social commentary and will generally be appreciated by anyone who is interested in these things and the way they interact with today's material world. There's a lot here that is 'out there' in mind and thought but has never really been put together in one place or with the end results that Johnson comes up with. Overall, it's a quick and engaging read.
This book is a mix of theory, philosophy, literature and social commentary and will generally be appreciated by anyone who is interested in these things and the way they interact with today's material world. There's a lot here that is 'out there' in mind and thought but has never really been put together in one place or with the end results that Johnson comes up with. Overall, it's a quick and engaging read.
May 4, 2015
A psychoanalytic and literary examination of the interplay of persons and things. Johnson examines the psychoanalytic basis of personhood, "thingliness", and considers how these two reinforce and negate one another. Her task is primarily one of deconstruction. The notions of anthropomorphism, personalization, and objectification, are examined. The work establishes a literary and psychoanalytic fluidity between persons and things, and yet reinforces the notion that persons must treated as persons.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews