A New Philosophy of Discourse: Language Unbound

Description

What would happen if structures, forms, and other stand-alone entities thought to comprise our intellectual toolkit—words, meanings, signs—were jettisoned? How would a work written in a purportedly dead language, like The Iliad, or penned in a foreign tongue be approached without structures such as meaning-bearing signs and grammatical rules? From these questions the original concept of 'talk!' is introduced as an innovative new method for interpreting texts and speech, combining literary theory, literary criticism, philosophy, and philosophy of language. With a focus on humanistic, literary texts, critics including, Derek Attridge, Mary Poovey, and Charles Altieri are drawn alongside philosophers, Stanley Cavell, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger to reveal the possibilities of a new discourse for a variety of people working in and studying the humanities today. In this method, language and texts are thought of as active ‘events’, replete with allusions to history, context and tradition that are always in the making. Structural analyses are found wanting and exposed for their copious limitations in this ground-breaking study which bridges the analytical/continental divide, placing rigorous inquiry at the heart of its humanistic approach. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Preface Part One: Discourse and Literary Studies Chapter 1: Discourse in Contemporary Literary Studies (Limit Cases and Spectra) 1.1 Discourse and Literary Form 1.2 The Textual and the Imaginary (Derek Attridge, Mary Poovey, and Charles Altieri) Chapter 2: Discourse as Literary Innovation (Charles Bernstein) Chapter 3: From Persons to Words 3.1 Persons 3.2 Words 3.3 UnBecoming Chapter 4: Nothing Is Metaphor 4.1 Metaphor and Time 4.2 Interlude on Words 4.3 Discourse and Time: “Free Balloons” 4.4 Traditionality Chapter 5: Yet It's Personal: The Politics of Personhood (Martha Nussbaum, Cora Diamond, and Stanley Elkin) 5.1 The Spirit of Realism 5.2 Collectivity in Elkin 5.3 From Collectivity to Politics 5.4 Discourse and the Political Part Two: Discourse and Text Chapter 6: Can the Text Be “Saved” in Discourse? (The Early Walter Michaels) 6.1 Discourse and Representation 6.2 Losing Belief and Saving the Text 6.3 Text and Time Chapter 7: Why Language Can’t Help (Discourse in Truth and Method) 7.1 Language as Discourse and Tradition 7.2 “Word/World” and “Word/Word” Holism 7.3 Discourse Alone: World versus Worldview (Weltansicht) Chapter 8: Discourse (The Early Martin Heidegger) 8.1 Interpreting Discourse (Rede) in BT 8.2 Sinn and Bedeutung in BT 8.3 Assertions, Presence-at-hand, and Truth: Heidegger’s Neither/Nor Chapter 9: Discourse and Text (Davidson and Heidegger) 9.1 Perceptions and Statements in Husserl, McDowell, Gadamer, Davidson, and Heidegger 9.2 Truth Semantics in Davidson 9.3 Externalist Texts Selected Bibliography Index