Overview

The title Body and Story refers to the division of categories which establishes one axis of this book: that which lies between the world understood in corporeal or material terms and the world understood as text. Richard Terdiman studies this contest between bodies and language--epistemological foundations for the Enlightenment and Postmodernity respectively--through the works of eighteenth-century encyclopedist Denis Diderot and of contemporary philosopher-icon Jacques Derrida. Terdiman argues that despite their very real and irreconcilable opposition, a constant negotiation or mutual interrogation has always taken place between these two domains of theory, even as the balance at times shifts to one side or the other. In analyzing these shifts at the center of the past few centuries' evolving understanding of human experience, he seeks also to develop a new model for understanding how theories can and do legitimately coexist in our intellectual conception of the world, and to offer a new ethics for managing this coexistence.

Full Product Details

9780801885433

Table of Contents

Reviews

In this nuanced study, Terdiman addresses a conflict that seems to define much of contemporary critical debate: the conflict between seeing the world as something that can be experienced directly and immediately and seeing the world as being defined through and through by representation and language... Highly recommended. Choice 2006 Given its interdisciplinary theme and state-of-the-art methodology, Body and Story is a relevant contribution to students and researchers of philosophy, literature, culture and history. -- Cyana Leahy-Dios European Legacy 2008 A thought-provoking book and an original contribution. -- Christopher Cowley and Alena Dvorakova Philosophy in Review 2008

A welcome reflection on the condition of theory in the crepuscule of its idols. It searches ahead and backward; it looks all about a splendid variety of critical texts from French, German, and Anglo-American traditions; its own inconclusiveness becomes the very proof of its reading. Terdiman looks at theory from an angle that tends to be placed in the Enlightenment and dialectical philosophy and not from a point of allegiance with one Poststructuralist philosopher over another. - Tom Conley, Harvard University In this nuanced study, Terdiman addresses a conflict that seems to define much of contemporary critical debate: the conflict between seeing the world as something that can be experienced directly and immediately and seeing the world as being defined through and through by representation and language... Highly recommended. - Choice

Author Information

Richard Terdiman is a professor of literature and the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available