Abstract
Deconstruction has a reputation for being the most complex and forbidding of contemporary critical approaches to literature, but in fact almost all of us have, at one time, either deconstructed a text or badly wanted to deconstruct one. Sometimes when we hear a lecturer effectively marshal evidence to show that a book means primarily one thing, we long to interrupt and ask what he or she would make of other, conveniently overlooked passages that seem to contradict the lecturer’s thesis. Sometimes, after reading a provocative critical article that almost convinces us that a familiar work means the opposite of what we assumed it meant, we may wish to make an equally convincing case for our former reading of the text. We may not think that the poem or novel in question better supports our interpretation, but we may recognize that the text can be used to support both readings. And sometimes we simply want to make that point: texts can be used to support seemingly irreconcilable positions.
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Deconstruction: A Selected Bibliography
Arac, Jonathan, Wlad Godzich, and Wallace Martin, eds. The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. See especially the essays by Bové, Godzich, Pease, and Corngold.
Berman, Art. From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: The Reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988.
Butler, Christopher. Interpretation, Deconstruction, and Ideology: An Introduction to Some Current Issues in Literary Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.
Clayton, Jay. The Pleasure of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975. See especially ch. 10.
Esch, Deborah. “Deconstruction.” Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: MLA, 1992. 374–91.
Feminist Studies 14 (1988). Special issue on deconstruction and feminism.
Hamacher, Werner, Neil Hertz, and Thomas Keenan. Responses: On Paul de Man’s Wartime Journalism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989.
Hartman, Geoffrey. “Blindness and Insight.” The New Republic, 7 Mar. 1988.
Jay, Gregory S. America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.
Leiten, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. See especially ch. 10, “Deconstructive Criticism.”
Leitch, Vincent B. Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism. New York: Columbia UP, 1992.
Loesberg, Jonathan. Aestheticism and Deconstruction: Pater, Derrida, and de Man. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
Melville, Stephen W. Philosophy Beside Itself: On Deconstruction and Modernism. Theory and History of Lit. 27. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.
Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction and the Interests of Theory. Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory 4. Norman: U of Oklahoma P,1989.
Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Methuen, 1982. Rev. ed. London: Routledge, 1991.
Norris, Christopher. Paul de Man, Deconstruction and the Critique of Aesthetic Ideology. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Weber, Samuel. Institution and Interpretation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Marx, Karl. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978.
Works by de Man, Derrida, and Miller
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. See especially ch. 1, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” and ch. 7, “Metaphor (Second Discourse)”
de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight. New York: Oxford UP, 1971. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. The 1983 edition contains important essays not included in the original edition.
de Man, Paul. “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant.” Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects. Ed. Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1984. 121–44.
de Man, Paul. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.
de Man, Paul. Romanticism and Contemporary Culture. Ed. E.S. Burt, Kevin Newmarkj, and Andrzej Warminski. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
de Man, Paul. Wartime Journalism, 1939–1943. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989.
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques. “Différance.” Speech and Phenomena. Trans. David B. Alison. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973.
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. 1972. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. See especially the concise, incisive “Translator’s Introduction,” which provides a useful point of entry into this work and others by Derrida.
Derrida, Jacques. “Force of Law: The ’Mystical Foundation of Authority.’” Trans. Mary Quaintance. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice. Ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson. New York: Routledge, 1992. 3–67.
Derrida, Jacques. Given Time. 1, Counterfeit Money. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. Contains the essay “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy.”
Derrida, Jacques. Memoires for Paul de Man. Wellek Library Lectures. Trans. Cecile Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, and Eduardo Cadava. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Trans, of De la grammatologie. 1967.
Derrida, Jacques. “Passions.” Derrida: A Critical Reader. Ed. David Wood. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans, with intro. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
Derrida, Jacques. “Some Statements and Truisms about Neo-logisms, Newisms, Postisms, and Other Small Seisisms.” The States of “Theory.” New York: Columbia UP, 1990. 63–94.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. 1967. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.
Miller, J. Hillis. Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.
Miller, J. Hillis. The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.
Miller, J. Hillis. Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.
Miller, J. Hillis. Hawthorne and History: Defacing It. Cambridge: Basil Black-well, 1991. Contains a bibliography of Miller’s work from 1955 to 1990.
Miller, J. Hillis. Illustrations. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.
Miller, J. Hillis. “Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure.” Georgia Review 30 (1976): 3–31, 330–48.
Miller, J. Hillis. Typographies. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.
Miller, J. Hillis. Versions of Pygmalion. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
Essays on Deconstruction and Poststructuralism
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill, 1974. In this influential work, Barthes turns from a structuralist to a post-structuralist approach.
Benstock, Shari. Textualizing the Feminine: On the Limits of Genre. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1991.
Bloom, Harold, et al., eds. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: Seabury, 1979. Includes essays by Bloom, de Man, Derrida, Miller, and Hartman.
Chase, Cynthia. Decomposing Figures. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.
Cohen, Tom. Anti-Mimesis: From Plato to Hitchcock. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Elam, Diane. Feminism and Deconstruction: Ms. en Abyme. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Felman, Shoshana. “Rereading Femininity.” Special Issue on “Feminist Readings: French Texts/American Contexts,” Yale French Studies 62 (1981).
Felman, Shoshana. “Turning the Screw of Interpretation.” Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise. Special issue, Yale French Studies 55–56 (1978): 3–508. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.
Harari, Josué, ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979.
Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.
Johnson, Barbara. A World of Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
Krupnick, Mark, ed. Displacement: Derrida and After. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
Meese, Elizabeth, and Alice Parker, eds. The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.
Ulmer, Gregory L. Applied Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.
Ulmer, Gregory L. Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Deconstructive and Poststructuralist Approaches to Conrad and Heart of Darkness
Bonney, William. Thorns and Arabesques: Contexts for Conrad’s Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.
Brooks, Peter. “An Unreadable Report: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Knopf, 1984.
Mansell, Darrell. “Trying to Bring Literature Back Alive: The Ivory in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Criticism 33 (1991): 205–15.
Pecora, Vincent. “The Sounding Empire: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Self and Form in Modern Narrative. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
The New Historicism: Further Reading
Brantlinger, Patrick. “Cultural Studies vs. the New Historicism.” English Studies/Cultural Studies: Institutionalizing Dissent. Ed. Isaiah Smithson and Nancy Ruff. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994. 43–58.
Cox, Jeffrey N., and Larry J. Reynolds, eds. New Historical Literary Study. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Dimock, Wai-Chee. “Feminism, New Historicism, and the Reader.” American Literature 63 (1991): 601–22.
Howard, Jean. “The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies.” English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 13–43.
Lindenberger, Herbert. The History in Literature: On Value, Genre, Institutions. New York: Columbia UP, 1990.
Lindenberger, Herbert. “Toward a New History in Literary Study.” Profession: Selected Articles from the Bulletins of the Association of Departments of English and the Association of the Departments of Foreign Languages. New York: MLA, 1984. 16–23.
Liu, Alan. “The Power of Formalism: The New Historicism.” English Literary History 56 (1989): 721–71.
McGann, Jerome. The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1985.
McGann, Jerome. Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985. See especially the introduction and the essays in the following sections: “Historical Methods and Literary Interpretations” and “Biographical Contexts and the Critical Object.”
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History.” English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 5–12.
Morris, Wesley. Toward a New Historicism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
New Literary History 21 (1990). “History and …” (special issue). See especially the essays by Carolyn Porter, Rena Fraden, Clifford Geertz, and Renato Rosaldo.
Representations. This quarterly journal, printed by the University of California Press, regularly publishes new historicist studies and cultural criticism.
Thomas, Brook. “The Historical Necessity for — and Difficulties with — New Historical Analysis in Introductory Courses.” College English 49 (1987): 509–22.
Thomas, Brook. The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
Thomas, Brook. “The New Literary Historicism.” A Companion to American Thought. Ed. Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Klappenberg. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1995.
Thomas, Brook. “Walter Benn Michaels and the New Historicism: Where’s the Difference?” Boundary 2 18 (1991): 118–59.
Veeser, H. Aram, ed. The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989. See especially Veeser’s introduction, Louis Montrose’s “Professing the Renaissance,” Catherine Gallagher’s “Marxism and the New Historicism,” and Frank Lentricchia’s “Foucault’s Legacy: A New Historicism?”
Wayne, Don E. “Power, Politics and the Shakespearean Text: Recent Criticism in England and the United States.” Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. Ed. Jean Howard and Marion O’Connor. New York: Methuen, 1987. 47–67.
Winn, James A. “An Old Historian Looks at the New Historicism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993): 859–70.
The New Historicism: Influential Examples
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Brown, Gillian. Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.
Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Brighton, Eng.: Harvester, 1984.
Dollimore, Jonathan, and Alan Sinfield, eds. Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Manchester, Eng.: Manchester UP, 1985. This volume occupies the borderline between new historicist and cultural criticism. See especially the essays by Dollimore, Greenblatt, and Tennenhouse.
Gallagher, Catherine. The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.
Goldberg, Jonathan. James I and the Politics of Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983.
Greenblatt, Stephen J. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Greenblatt, Stephen J. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.
Greenblatt, Stephen J. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. See chapter 1 and the chapter on Othello titled “The Improvisation of Power.”
Greenblatt, Stephen J. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. See especially “The Circulation of Social Energy” and “Invisible Bullets.”
Liu, Alan. Wordsworth, the Sense of History. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989.
Marcus, Leah. Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.
McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.
Michaels, Walter Benn. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987.
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture.” Representations 2 (1983): 61–94. One of the most influential early new historicist essays.
Mullaney, Steven. The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: U of California P, 1975.
Sinfield, Alan. Literature, Politics, and Culture in Postwar Britain. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.
Tennenhouse, Leonard. Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres. New York: Methuen, 1986.
Foucault and His Influence
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper, 1972.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973.
Foucault, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman. Trans. Alan Sheridan et al. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980.
Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the Self. Ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1988.
Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.
Sheridan, Alan. Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. New York: Tavis-tock, 1980.
Smart, Barry. Michel Foucault. New York: Ellis Horwood and Tavis-tock, 1985.
Other Writers and Works of Interest to New Historicist Critics
Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. Bakhtin wrote many influential studies on subjects as varied as Dostoyevsky, Rabelais, and formalist criticism. But this book, in part due to Holquist’s helpful introduction, is probably the best place to begin reading Bakhtin.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, 1968.
Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Works of Diderot. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic, 1973.
Geertz, Clifford. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper, 1974.
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.
Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past. Trans. Keith Tribe. Cambridge: MIT P, 1985.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Columbia UP, 1978.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.
Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. New York: Routledge, 1990.
New Historicist (and Recent Historical) Approaches to Heart of Darkness
Brantlinger, Patrick. “Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?” Criticism 27 (1985): 363–85.
Glenn, Ian. “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Sociological Reading.” Literature and History 13 (1987): 238–56.
Hawkins, Hunt. “Conrad and the Psychology of Colonialism.” Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties. University: U of Alabama P, 1985.
Hawkins, Hunt. “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: Politics and History.” Conradiana 24 (1992): 207–17.
Hawkins, Hunt. “Joseph Conrad, Roger Casement, and the Congo Reform Movement.” Journal of Modern Literature 9 (1981–82): 65–80.
Humphries, Reynold. “The Discourse of Colonialism: Its Meaning and Relevance for Conrad’s Fiction.” Conradiana 21 (1989): 107–33.
Parry, Benita. Conrad and Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1983.
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Murfin, R.C., Miller, J.H. (1996). Deconstruction and Heart of Darkness . In: Murfin, R.C. (eds) Heart of Darkness. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14016-9_6
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