Deconstruction and the 'Unfinished Project of Modernity'

ISBN-13: 9780415929554 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 240 str.

Christopher Norris

Opis

Deconstruction has been widely and detrimentally misunderstood. In this provocative new book, Christopher Norris challenges the prevalent idea that deconstruction is merely a more specialized offshoot of postmodernism. Through a close engagement with some key thinkers-among them Derrida, Foucault, de Man, Habermas, Lyotard and Levinas--Norris argues that deconstruction is part of the unfinished project of modernity--a project whose interests and values deconstruction upholds by continuing to question them in a spirit of enlightened self-critical inquiry. Assessing the impact of postmodernist thought across a range of disciplines, the book presents a lucid analysis and guide to the problems and prospects of critical theory.

Spis treści

Introduction -- Chapter 1 Deconstruction versus Postmodernism: epistemology, ethics, aesthetics -- Chapter 2 Postmodern Ethics and the Trouble with Relativism -- Chapter 3 Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’ -- Chapter 4 Deconstruction, Postmodernism and Philosophy of Science -- Chapter 5 ‘The Idea of the University’: some interdisciplinary soundings -- Chapter 6 Ethics, Autonomy and Self-Invention: debating Foucault -- Chapter 7 ‘The Night in which All Cows are Black’: Paul de Man, ‘mere reading’ and indifference to philosophy -- Chapter 8 Conflict, Compromise or Complementarity: ideas of science in modern literary theory -- Chapter 9 Sexed Equations and Vexed Physicists: the ‘two cultures’ revisited -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

O autorze

Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. His many publications include Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (Routledge 1991), Jacques Derrida, The Truth About Postmodernism, New Idols of the Cave, Resources of Realism, Against Relativism, and Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism, (Routledge 2000).