Deconstruction And "Error"

This dissertation is aimed toward introduce and analyze Paul de Man's literary criticism through a key word error which occurrence in his texts repeatedly.As a Yale School theorist, Paul de Man is the chief theorist of Deconstruction literary criticism of modern America. The most famous points of Paul de Man, such as blindness and insight and rhetoric reading, etc., have the vividly deconstructive characteristic and which did not copy the European literary criticism simply. Just as Derrida said that the Deconstruction origins of America, not import from Europe, and then effected all over the world. Jonathan Culler remanded that the main task of America literary criticism is to interpret the works of Paul de Man and find the deep means of these works.As the most effective and controversial theorist of America since 1950s, Paul de Man's criticism became the focus of attention for several years. Though there were so many study works about Paul de Man, and those comments had different standpoint and evaluation, it is no question that Paul de Man has universal effect to all over the world. Contrary to the foreign, the study on Paul de Man's literary criticism is very rare in China. There are only two books of Paul de Man had been translated into Chinese, and there no any academic work had been published.The reason of this phenomenon is very sophisticate, but the most important reason is that the works of Paul de Man is very difficult. The academic background of Paul de Man is very complex and his discussion across several different branch of learning, such as philosophy, literary, linguistic and sociology. For this reason, logicality is the main characteristic of Paul de Man's work. The language of his work is very obscure and fierce. Rather, his works has no systematicness. All of these become the barrier of reading. During my studies on Paul de Man's works, I found the error is very important in his works; it occurs again and again and passes through the whole life of Paul de Man. Paul de Man give rich meaning to error and that conform to his deconstructive reading. Thus the method of this dissertation is that according the key concept that is error to interpret the entire thought of Paul de Man. The range of this dissertation limits in the literary criticism of Paul de Man and in my opinion, this conform to Paul de Man's criticism. As Paul de Man said:"My interest in criticism is subordinate to my interest in primary literary texts……My tentative generalization are not aimed a criticism of criticism but toward literary language in general".Choose this question as my project needs my great bravery. I use the close reading read Paul de Man's works. In this process I must deep into his criticism, meanwhile, I cannot confused by his sophisticate thought. I cannot lose in his criticism forest. The main intention of my study is to find the blindness of his criticism.In general, Paul de Man's criticism can be divided into two sections. In his early works Paul de Man was deliberate upon the subjectivity, temporality and intentionality. During his latter scholarship stage, he put forward the deconstructive reading and his deconstruction criticism which is considered the real theory of Paul de Man. This dissertation thinks that Paul de Man had his own theory which was not formed by Derrida's theory. During Paul de Man's whole scholarship life, he insists on the error theory which includes separation, deviation and the truth live with the error. The deconstruction theory has the close relation with the error. In order to understand the deconstructive reading theory clearly, the dissertation analysis three key concepts, temporality, intentionality and rhetoricity, and the error theory is the internal clue of the dissertation.In the investigation of temporality, the dissertation concerns temporality, modernity, the relation between memory and art, the connotation of the method of rhetoric. Paul de Man concerned the temporality from different viewpoint at different stage, but concerned the error all along. In the context of modernity, Paul de Man thought that represent the present is the basis characteristic of literary; meanwhile, literary language is the unique sign which is deferring and difference. This separation dispelled the literary modernity. In the context of temporality, memory looks like duration on a linear chain. But Paul de Man said that we should remember the forgetting in fact, because neither memory nor writing can represent the presence and they are the process of reconstruct the presence. Then, reading or understanding could not reconstruct the object. The error hides in the process of memory which origins of the rhetoricity language. Paul de Man thought that allegory and irony are both origin of the error. Allegory is the difference of sign and irony is the deviation between the self-experience and the sign itself. This is the important transition of Paul de Man from subjectivity and temporality to rhetoricity.Paul de Man emphasized on the relation between his criticism and New Critics when he analysis the intentionality. Paul de Man deconstructed the theory of reproduce the original intention of Richards and the intentional fallacy theory of Wimsatt. Furthermore, Paul de Man re-interpreted the pre-structure of Martin Heidegger and the totality of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Paul de Man used the hermeneutic circle theory found the blind of the organic unity of the New Critics. Paul de Man put forward his own theory and made deeply research about the intentionality in this process. Thus study showed the error conscious of Paul de Man which include the error between the original intention of the author and its representation, which posed by Richards and Empson's, the error of the New Critics between the organicism and the natural object, and the error of Martin Heidegger's hermeneutic circle and Paul de Man's pre-structure, the error of Hans-Georg Gadamer's totality in the horizon of temporality. All of the theories have influenced the emergence of Paul de Man's rhetoric reading theory.Rhetoric reading theory is the most famous theory of Paul de Man. After the studies on the temporality and the intentionality, especially the error of the temporality and the intentionality, rhetoricity naturally enter the horizon of Paul de Man. Just as Paul de Man said that the rhetoricity is the nature of language, the literary text consists of the rhetoric language. Paul de Man benefit from the linguistic of Ferdinand de Saussure, Saussure assertion that the relation of langue and parole is arbitrary which conform to the error theory of Paul de Man. This is not only the error of the rhetoric language when the text represents the object, but also the coexistence of blindness and insight. Paul de Man asserts that blindness and insight are both in the critics reading and the error is the tie point of them.Therefore, error is the key concept of deconstructive reading of Paul de Man. The error manifest in the separation of ego, awareness and nature, the Being and the beings, in the difference of symbols and meaning, language and reality. Blindness and insight is coexistence and the rhetoric reading find that the intention of the author and the text is difference, what the text said and what it had did is inconsistent. The task of deconstruction is the error and separation, that is, deconstruct any unity or totality.The dissertation concludes that symptom of the criticism of Paul de Man is: firstly, generalizes the construction of language, the text is separates from the reality and become a closed area, the writing turn into the play of symbols. Secondly, the conflict between the readings is misreading and the construction of the authoritative reading mode. Paul de Man asserts that the blindness and insight is coexistence in critics'text, but his assertion is very irrefutable. The third symptom is the confusion of the synchrony and diachrony. According Martin Heidegger's temporality, Paul de Man asserts that the rhetoricity is the nature of language; meanwhile, he distorts Saussure's linguistics and emphasis the difference between signifier and signifie. The double standard make Paul de Man falls deep into contradictions.Though deconstruction criticism has been declined, many key concepts and problems are not solute, the dissertation is only the beginning of my studies. To prepare for this project, the author collected many materials about Paul de Man, and I provide a chronicle of his works in order to promote the studies on deconstruction criticism.