Customer Reviews

Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 7)

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In this book, Paul de Man examines major European literary theorists of the twentieth century like Blanchot, Poulet, Lukacs, etc. and shows through his incisive insights, how each theorist while trying to explain the origin of the 'work' or of literature remained blind to what lies outside the purview of his thoeretical system, because the very logic of theorization always excludes something. Of particular interest is his critique of readings of Rousseau. Accordingly, some of the theorists he discusses are mainly Rousseau scholars.

This book is a good introduction to Paul de Man's writing. I'm not unbiased, since he was one of my instructors at Yale in the 70s. I am aware of the controversy surrounding him because of his personal life and collaboration with the Nazis in occupied Belgium, but that is extraneous to this book.

The strength of the book is its accessibility. De Man was reaching out to a more general audience than in the works published later in his life and posthumously by his many admirers and students. That having been said, it lacks some of the impact and depth of his other writings. Still, for someone looking to find out what all the fuss is about Deconstruction, this is the place to start.

I must confess a sympathy for de man. He usually gets pilloried by the right and everyone who is for truth, justice and the american way, but his readings of texts are very precise. There is a certain mathematicism in de man, such that his interpretations can be stated very quickly and don't require the accumulation of much detail. For instance, his discussion of the second discourse as an allegory and the contrast of painting to music is very interesting, although I suspect that he borrows alot from Benjamin (who I have not read). The structure of the 2nd discourse is the argument of the 2nd discourse--very elegant and precise. Ultimately wrong, but there you go. Unfortunately, the precision has the effect of reducing texts to their form. For instance, if we know that "leonine Achilles" is a metaphor, and then think the structure of metaphor, we know nothing about why Achilles is compared to a lion, we know nothing more about Homer or the Iliad. De man is ultimately precise but dull.

by a soulless man. De MAn understands nothing about the texts he reads, adn the reason for this is that it is clear that he has no real love of literature.