Activity

[...] Deconstruction is therefore an activity performed by texts which in the end have to acknowledge their own partial complicity with what they denounce. The most rigorous reading, it follows, is one that holds itself provisionally open to further deconstruction of its own operative concepts.

[...] Thus Barthes (drawing on Saussure) refers metaphorically to 'the speaking mass' in a context which purportedly invokes the totality of language, but which appeals even so to actual speakers and their speech as the source of that totality. Barthes may state, as a matter of principle, that lang…

[...] Once alerted to the rhetorical nature of philosophic arguments, the critic is in a strong position to reverse the age-old prejudice against literature as a debased or merely deceptive form of language. It now becomes possible to argue--indeed, impossible to deny--that literary texts are les…

[...] Deconstruction in this, its most rigorous form acts as a constant reminder of the ways in which language deflects or complicates the philosopher's project. Above all, deconstruction works to undo the idea--according to Derrida, the ruling illusion of Western metaphysics--that reason can someh…

What Marx finds in the present is a deadly clash of interests. But whereas a utopian thinker might exhort us to rise above these conflicts in the name of love and fellowship, Marx himself takes a very different line. He does indeed believe in love and fellowship, but he does not think they will be …