New books — From the March 2014 issue
SIGN IN to access Harper’s Magazine
Need to create a login? Want to change your email address or password? Forgot your password?
1. Sign in to Customer Care using your account number or postal address.
2. Select Email/Password Information.
3. Enter your new information and click on Save My Changes.
Subscribers can find additional help here. Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!
It is inevitable that some readers will take from Evelyn Barish’s biography of the life and misdeeds of Paul de Man the notion that literary theory is a crock. The title doesn’t help. The Double Life of Paul de Man (Liveright, $35) — the wind shrieks as the whip, or the hatchet, comes down. Barish is not the first to take a swing. Once, de Man was renowned with Jacques Derrida for reshaping literary study through deconstruction, a form of extremely close reading, a practice of digging up and pressing down on the oppositions and contradictions of language to generate a “play of signification,” hermeneutics without end. But he was discredited in 1988, when a diligent graduate student uncovered evidence of his anti-Semitic wartime journalism.
You are currently viewing this article as a guest. If you are a subscriber, please sign in.
If you aren't, please subscribe below and get access to the entire Harper's archive for only $45.99/year.
Or purchase this issue on your iOS or Android devices for $6.99.
SIGN IN to access Harper’s Magazine
Need to create a login? Want to change your email address or password? Forgot your password?
1. Sign in to Customer Care using your account number or postal address.
2. Select Email/Password Information.
3. Enter your new information and click on Save My Changes.
Subscribers can find additional help here. Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!
More from Christine Smallwood:
New books — From the December 2017 issue
New books — From the November 2017 issue
Sign up to receive The Weekly Review, Harper’s Magazine’s singular take on the past seven days of madness. It’s free!*
*Click “Unsubscribe” in the Weekly Review to stop receiving emails from Harper’s Magazine.