Body and Story: The Ethics and Practice of Theoretical Conflict
Johns Hopkins University Press (2005)
| Abstract | In Body and Story Richard Terdiman explores the tension between what seem two fundamentally different ways of understanding the world: as physical reality and as representation in language. In demonstrating the complicated relationship between these two perspectives, he also offers a new approach to the problem of conflicts between irreconcilable but equally compelling theoretical ideas. Enlightenment rationalism is most often understood as maintaining that words can meaningfully refer to and grasp things in the material world, while Postmodernism famously argues that nothing exists outside of language. Terdiman challenges this clean distinction, finding the early seeds of Postmodern doubt in the Enlightenment, and demonstrating the stubborn resistance of material reality -- particularly that of the body -- to language even today. Building on readings of works by 18th-century encyclopedist Denis Diderot and contemporary philosopher-icon Jacques Derrida, Terdiman argues that despite their genuine and profound opposition, a constant negotiation or mutual interrogation has always been taking place between these two world-views, even as the balance at times shifts to one side or the other. In analyzing these shifts he proposes a new model for understanding how seemingly unabridgeable theories legitimately coexist in our intellectual conception of the world, and he suggests a new ethics for managing this coexistence. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Theory (Philosophy Postmodernism Enlightenment Language and languages Philosophy Reality | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Buy the book | $19.90 used (27% off) $22.43 new (17% off) $23.46 direct from Amazon (14% off) Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | B842.T47 2005 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 0801885434 0801880688 9780801880681 9780801885433 | |||||||||
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