Beyond Poststructuralism: The Speculations of Theory and the Experience of Reading

The Contributors To Beyond Poststructuralism Critique The Excesses Of Poststructuralist Theory And Suggest Ways In Which The Study Of Literature Can Be Improved. The Essays In Part I Seek To Demonstrate Fallacies Of Structuralist And Poststructuralist Thought That Remain Potent Even Though The Theoretical Structures That Led To Their Enunciation Have Lost Much Of Their Original Influence. These Fallacies Include The Idea That One Must Avoid The Consideration Of Authorial Intention; That Meanings Are Undecidable; That There Is No Justification For Seeking Unity In A Text; That All Hierarchies Of Value Are Reversible; That History Is No More Than An Open Contest Among Competing Narrative Constructions; And That The Very Nature Of Language Makes The Falsifiability Of Statements About Human Experience Impossible. The Essays In Part Ii Suggest Ways To Bring Literary Study Into Closer Relation With Human Experience Of The World. Their Authors Emphasize The Role Of Literature In Providing New Perspectives And Broadening The Range Of Available Alternatives To What Is Threatening, Unjust, Fallacious, Or Absurd In Social And Cultural Structures. 1. From Splendours And Miseries Of The Academy / Bernard Bergonzi -- 2. Language, Realism, Subjectivity, Objectivity / John Holloway -- 3. Adam Naming The Animals / Wendell V. Harris -- 4. From Shaking The Concepts / A.d. Nuttall -- 5. Literature As Textual Intercourse / Raymond Tallis -- 6. Literary Theory And Its Discontents / John Searle -- 7. The Cultural Materialist Attack On Artistic Unity And The Problem Of Ideological Criticism / Richard Levin -- 8. An End To Hypocriticism / Robert Scholes -- 9. Authors And Books: The Return Of The Dead From The Graveyard Of Theory / James Battersby -- 10. Literature And Theory / David Bromwich -- 11. Toward A Critical Re-renewal: At The Corner Of Camus And Bloom Streets / Quentin Kraft -- 12. Deconstruction And The Redemption Of Difference / Michael Fischer -- 13. The Purloined Profession; Or, How To Reidealize Reading For The Text / Charles Altieri. Edited By Wendell V. Harris. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [435]-437) And Indexes.