Overview

What would happen if structures, forms, and other stand-alone entities thought to comprise our intellectual toolkit—words, meanings, signs—were jettisoned? How would a work written in a purportedly dead language, like The Iliad, or penned in a foreign tongue be approached if deemed legible without structures such as meaning-bearing signs or grammatical rules? A New Philosophy of Discourse charts a novel course in response to these questions, coining an original concept of discourse, or talk!, that Joshua Kates presents as more fundamental than language. In Kates’ conception of discourse, writing and speech take shape entirely as events, situated within histories, contexts, and traditions themselves always in the making. Combining literary theory, literary criticism, and philosophy, to reveal a new perspective on discourse, Kates focuses on literary criticism, literary texts by Charles Bernstein and Stanley Elkin, and the philosophical writings of Stanley Cavell, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Donald Davidson and Martin Heidegger. This ground-breaking study bridges the analytical/continental divide, by working through concrete problems using novel and extended interpretations with wide-ranging implications for the humanities.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joshua Kates (Indiana University, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:  

9781350186958

ISBN 10:   1350186953
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   19 May 2022
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Preface: Theory’s Redux? Part I Discourse 1. Discourse in Contemporary Literary Studies (Limit Cases and Spectra) 2. Discourse as Literary Innovation (Charles Bernstein) 3. From Persons to Words: “I am Stanley Cavell” 4. Nothing is Metaphor 5. Yet “It’s Personal”: The Politics of Personhood (Martha Nussbaum, Cora Diamond, Stanley Elkin) Part II Discourse and Text 6. Can the Text be “Saved” in Discourse? (The Early Walter Michaels) 7. Why Language Can’t Help (Truth and Method) 8. Discourse (The Early Martin Heidegger) 9. Discourse and Text (Davidson and Heidegger) Selected Bibliography Index

Reviews

Critical and provocative, Joshua Kates moves between the philosophy of language, hermeneutics, literary studies, and deconstruction. Offering a radical and innovative re-envisaging of our understanding of discourse and interpretation, relevant to work across the humanities and social sciences. * Jeff Malpas, Emeritus Distinguished Professor, University of Tasmania , Australia * An impressive engagement with fundamental problems of language and meaning. Arguing that the foundational use of language is talk, and that all types of discourse derive from talk in its historicity, Joshua Kates boldly explores a vast range of philosophical and literary interpretive frameworks to produce a surprising synthesis of Heidegger and Davidson. * Jonathan Culler, Professor of Comparative Literature, Cornell University, USA *

Author Information

Joshua Kates is currently Professor of English, and Adjunct Professor, Germanic Studies, at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He has published two books on Derrida’s early writings and their contexts.

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