Journey Of Reading: From Subjectivity To Rhetorical

The present dissertation is an attempt to introduce, straighten out and evaluate the deconstructive thoughts of American critic Paul de Man.Paul de Man's deconstructive strategy comes into being under the influence of two trends of thought: one being the phenomenological movement that took place in German and French in the early half of the 20' century, the other a combined impact of structural linguistics, semiotics, and Derrida's deconstruction. Through repeated dialogue with and constant reference to these thoughts, de Man gradually shifts his focus of criticism from subjectivity to rhetoricity. However, in spite of this methodological turn, quite a number of key ideas and viewpoints penetrate through de Man's critical life, for instance, the notion of impossibility of knowing, ontology of literature, the concept of temporality, unceasing attention to rhetoric etc. So the author believes that if we want to get a comprehensive understanding of Paul de Man's decontruction, we have to take into consideration both his early and later stage, and try to find out the links and changes between two stages. Mainly due to this reason, the paper is divided into two parts: the first deals with de Man's early works, and the relationship between de Man and phenomenological movement; the second with de Man's rhetorical reading which was formed at the end of 1960s and the beginning of 1970s.Each part of the paper consists of three chapters, designed to trace back, clear up and estimate de Man's deconstruction from six aspects. The first chapter makes an analysis of the notions of unhappy consciousness and impossiblity of knowing, and points out that the strange combination of dualism with principle of inwardness breeds the seed of weakness in de Man's theory. The second chapter investigates the relationship between de Man and New Criticism. By a close reading of de Man's critical essays and New Critics' works, this chapter intends to answer the question of where de Man benefits from New Critics, and where he reaches beyond his predecessors. The third chapter is a discussion of how de Man borrows from Heidegger's philosophy (particularly notions of hermeneutic circle and temporality) and develops a kind of literary criticism tinged with phenomenological color. The next chapter serves to explain how de Man applies the model of blindness and insight to establish a deconstructive criticism of his own. The fifth chapter is the result of an attempt to describe the relations between Derrida and Paul de Man, aiming to not only reveal the common source of the two critics, but also reflect on the problems and weaknesses of deconstructive thought in virtue of Saussure's linguistics. The last chapter marks an effort to interpret rhetorics elaborated by de Man in later stage. By a careful comparison between this rhetorics and traditional rhetorics, the paper tries to chase down where de Man's rhetorics comes from and how it develops into a powerful weapon of deconstruction, so as to arrive at a rational analysis and deeper understanding of de Man's later thought. It is through putting forward and replying to the above questions that the author gets more and more clear picture of Paul de Man.As a trend of thought, deconstruction has been past its prime and fallen into decay. However, a number of crucial theoretical problems aroused by deconstruction will not automatically become clear after its ebb tide. The purpose of the paper, therefore, is to raise these problems, clarify them with patience, and try to find out the limitations of deconstruction and the sticking point of Paul de Man's theory.