The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America (Volume 6) (Theory and History of Literature) Paperback – July 18, 1983

Although deconstruction did not get its start at Yale, the Yale Critics (Bloom, Hartman, de Man, and Miller) generally get the credit for jump starting in the 1970s what Derrida began in 1967 at Johns Hopkins. During the few years that they worked together, they each pursued their distinctive strands of a literary theory that is just as contentious now as then. In THE YALE CRITICS: DECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA, Arac, Godzich, and Martin edited essays by noted critics that in Martin's words seek "to disentangle the themes and theories of four critics who are often treated as a group because of their association at Yale." Along the way, they examine the then current state of literary theory in America by detailing the individual contributions of the Yale quartet. Arac et al grant that even to ask the right questions about the impact of deconstruction would be a monumental achievement. They begin by writing neither a text devised for the neophyte nor a primer that serves as a mere vade mecum of their works. What they have succeeded in doing is printing some eight essays, each of which zeros in on one of the accomplishments of the Yale critics. The content of each essay does not relate to a macroscopic adjudication of the ongoing viability of deconstruction. Even by 1983 it was pretty much accepted that deconstruction was no passing fad. The editors felt confident that their expected readers would have an abiding interest in the minutia of deconstruction, enough at any rate for them not to defend its right to exist.The essay on "Error in Paul de Man" by Stanley Corngold is representative. Corngold presents a side to de Man that is well known to his many readers, one who, in Corngold's words, exhibits "the extremity, the provocative display, the rush to the apodictic, the modish polemical tone--these qualities so evident in de Man's work of the '70s are indeed scandalous." Corngold considers de Man's lengthy attempt to distinguish "error" from "mistake." Corngold quotes at length both from de Man's BLINDNESS AND INSIGHT and ALLEGORIES OF READING. After an even lengthier exegesis that reveals that de Man's polysemy is no more than a garbling of some rather basic misunderstanding on de Man's part on the writings of Heidegger and Holderlin, Corngold concludes that "De Man's final confusion of the terms (error and mistake) occurs through his pretending to truth in the mode of error." Now, I personally enjoy the labyrinthine give and take of obscure theoretical jargon, but not everyone might feel the same.One unintended historical irony concerning de Man is that had Corngold waited just a few more years to write his essay, then Corngold would have had another de Man "error" to explicate. This error would have been the thorny one of either condemning or condoning de Man's rabid followers who tried their level best to relativize de Man's pro Nazi writings in Belgium in 1941 and 1942 by using the same deconstructive legerdemain that he showed so much skill in his various books.What emerges from a considered reading of THE YALE CRITICS is an in depth look at a quartet of Yale critics who, for better or worse, have solidified the post-structural grip that deconstruction has on theory today.