The scandal of the speaking body : Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or seduction in two languages / Shoshana Felman ; translated by Catherine Porter ; with a new foreword by Stanley Cavell ; and afterword by Judith Butler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Felman, Shoshana.

Series:

Meridian (Stanford, Calif.)

Meridian, crossing aesthetics

Standardized Title:

Scandale du corps parlant. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Speech acts (Linguistics).

Performative (Philosophy).

Don Juan (Legendary character) in literature.

Comedy.

Molière, 1622-1673. Dom Juan.

Austin, J. L. (John Langshaw), 1911-1960.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is a promise? What are the consequences of the act of promising? In this bold yet subtle meditation, the author contemplates the seductive promise of speech and the seductive promise of love. Imagining an encounter between Molière’s Don Juan and J. L. Austin, between a mythical figure of the French classical theater and a twentieth-century philosopher, she explores the relation between speech and the erotic, using a literary text as the ground for a telling encounter between philosophy, linguistics, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. In the years since the publication of this book (which the author today calls “the boldest, the most provocative, but also the most playful” she has written), speech act theory has continued to play a central and defining role in the theories of sexuality, gender, performance studies, post-colonial studies, and cultural studies. This book remains topical as readers increasingly discover how multiply relevant the speaking body is. Moving beyond the domain of formal linguistic analysis to address these questions, the author has written a daring and seductive book.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface to the New Edition

Foreword to The Scandal of the Speaking Body

The Scandal of the Speaking Body

Preface: The Promising Animal

1. Between Linguistics and Philosophy of Langauge: Theories of Promise, Promises of Theory

2. The Perversion of Promising: Don Juan and Literary Performance

3. The Scandal of the Performative

4. Knowledge and Pleasure, or the Philosopher’s Performance (Psychoanalysis and the Performative)

Afterword

Notes

Index

Crossing Aesthetics

Notes:

Original English title: The literary speech act. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1983.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8047-6689-4

1-4175-0138-3

OCLC:

54893315