Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Preface: Theory’s Redux? Part I Discourse 1. Discourse in Contemporary Literary Studies (Limit Cases and Spectra) 2. Discourse as Literary Innovation (Charles Bernstein) 3. From Persons to Words: “I am Stanley Cavell” 4. Nothing is Metaphor 5. Yet “It’s Personal”: The Politics of Personhood (Martha Nussbaum, Cora Diamond, Stanley Elkin) Part II Discourse and Text 6. Can the Text be “Saved” in Discourse? (The Early Walter Michaels) 7. Why Language Can’t Help (Truth and Method) 8. Discourse (The Early Martin Heidegger) 9. Discourse and Text (Davidson and Heidegger) Selected Bibliography Index

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Proposes a new understanding of language within the humanities, mounting a defence of rigorous humanistic inquiry to arrive at bold new forms of interpretation and understanding.

About the Author

Joshua Kates is currently Professor of English, and Adjunct Professor, Germanic Studies, at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He has published two books on Derrida’s early writings and their contexts.

Reviews

Critical and provocative, Joshua Kates moves between the philosophy of language, hermeneutics, literary studies, and deconstruction. Offering a radical and innovative re-envisaging of our understanding of discourse and interpretation, relevant to work across the humanities and social sciences.
*Jeff Malpas, Emeritus Distinguished Professor, University of Tasmania , Australia*

An impressive engagement with fundamental problems of language and meaning. Arguing that the foundational use of language is talk, and that all types of discourse derive from talk in its historicity, Joshua Kates boldly explores a vast range of philosophical and literary interpretive frameworks to produce a surprising synthesis of Heidegger and Davidson.
*Jonathan Culler, Professor of Comparative Literature, Cornell University, USA*