The poetics of singularity : the counter-culturalist turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and the later Gadamer / Timothy Clark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark, Timothy, 1958- author.

Series:

The Frontiers of Theory : FRTH

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.

Heidegger, Martin.

Derrida, Jacques.

Blanchot, Maurice.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-2002.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg.

Criticism.

Particularity (Aesthetics).

Poetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 186 pages)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

Summary:

This polemical book reveals the basic tenets of what may be called a 'poetics of singularity' in Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and the strange late essays of Hans Georg Gadamer.At issue is the at first simple, even familiar, idea that literary or poetic 'meaning' cannot be stated in terms other than its own, that a text strives towards the status of being an example, if of anything, only of itself, sole witness of what it alone projects. This issue opens a series of powerful questions concerning basic features of Western thought - about the nature of understanding, on Kierkegaard's 'singular individual' that is yet each human life in its exceptionality, of the uniqueness of historical testimony, the nature of community. The Poetics of Singularity forms an ethically compelling alternative to the currently dominant cultural/social studies paradigm in literary criticism, a neo-Darwinian understanding of art and life which is sometimes only a disguised version of American nationalism.Key FeaturesAn original work of scholarship combining elucidation, research and polemics.Identifies a forceful tradition of twentieth-century poetics - which differs from received ideas of 'deconstruction' - which the author names 'the poetics of singularity'.Makes available in English some previously untranslated material in the chapters on Heidegger and Gadamer, and covers relatively unknown texts by Blanchot and some very recent work by Derrida.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor's Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction: a school of singularity?

Chapter 1. Freedoms and the institutional Americanism of literary study

Chapter 2. Heidegger's dream of singularisation

Chapter 3. The uniquely obvious: singularity in Gadamer's late essays

Chapter 4. Pitching strangely: the poetic Blanchet

Chapter 5. Derrida: a pragmatics of singularity

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-179) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4744-6578-1