Books by Andrzej Warminski

More than twenty years after his death, Paul de Man remains a haunting presence in the American academy. This work analyzes and evaluates aspects of de Man's powerful legacy. It focuses on: his great theme of "reading"; his complex notions of "history," "materiality," and "aesthetic ideology"; and his institutional role as a teacher.

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 Holderlin-a moment essential for de Man's shifts to the question of rhetoric and then to the question of ideology-and ends with a reading of Derrida's 'last' text on de Man and its uncanny self-inscription in Rousseau's episode of the stolen ribbon.

A new work of scholarship in the practice of rhetorical readingThis 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 interview on the topic of "e;Deconstruction at Yale."e; All three of these latter texts are explicitly about the inescapable function and importance of the rhetoric of tropes for any critical reading or literary study worthy of the name. As Andrzej Warminski demonstrates, 'rhetorical reading' is a species of 'deconstructive reading'-in the full 'de Manian' sense-but one that, rather than harkening back to a past over and done with, would open the texts to a different future. Key Features:New readings of texts by Wordsworth, Keats, Descartes, Nietzsche, and Henry JamesEssays and an interview on Paul de Man and 'Deconstruction at Yale' Reflects on and exemplifies the pedagogical value of 'de Manian' rhetorical readingAttempts to open a future for 'deconstructive' or 'de Manian' reading