A new work of scholarship in the 'practice' of rhetorical reading. This monograph provides readings of literary and philosophical texts that work through the rhetoric of tropes to the material inscription at the origin of these texts. The book focuses on the practice and pedagogical value of rhetorical reading. Its readings follow an itinerary from poetic texts (such as those by Wordsworth and Keats) through theoretical or philosophical texts (by Descartes and Nietzsche) to narrative fiction (by Henry James). The book also contains two essays on Paul de Man and literary theory and an...

Readings of de Man's critique of aesthetic ideology and the strange 'materiality' that emerges from it. This volume explicates Paul de Man's late project of a critique of aesthetic ideology and attempts to extend it in ways productive for critical thought. After a reading of de Man's work in all its rigour - and hence also the aesthetic theory of Kant, Schiller, and Hegel- the book goes on to uncover a 'material moment' in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that lives on in Marx and in the Marxist tradition. The book also elucidates de Man's critical reading of Heidegger on the example of...