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Decolonizing Literacies: Disrupting, Reclaiming, and Remembering Relationship in Literacy Education (Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education)
by Towani Duchscher Kimberly LentersThis volume examines the ways in literacy has been used as a weapon and a means for settler colonialism, challenging colonized definitions of literacy and centring relationships as key to broadening understandings. It begins by confronting the multiple ways that settler colonialism has used literacy and definitions of literacy as a gatekeeper to participation in society. In response to settler colonialism’s violent acts of extraction, displacement, and replacement enacted upon the land, the resources, the people, and understandings of literacy, the editors propose a unique approach to decolonizing understandings of literacy through a triangulation of disruption, reclamation, and remembering relationships. This is enacted and explored through a range of diverse chapter contributions, written in the form of stories, poems, artworks, theatres, and essays, allowing the authentic voices of the authors to shine through, and opening up the English Language Arts as a space for engagement and interpretation with diverse, racialized understandings of literacy. Disrupting Eurocentric, colonized understandings that narrowly define literacy as reading and writing the colonial word, and advancing the movement to decolonize education, it will be of key interest to scholars, researchers, and educators with interest in literacy education, decolonizing education, anti-racist education, inclusive education, land-based literacy, and arts-based literacy.
Decolonizing Literature: An Introduction (Decolonizing the Curriculum)
by Anna BernardRecent efforts to diversify and decentre the literary canon taught at universities have been moderately successful. Yet this expansion of our reading lists is only the start of a broader decolonization of literary studies as a discipline; there is much left to be done. How can students and educators best participate in this urgent intellectual and political project? Anna Bernard argues that the decolonization of literary studies requires a change to not only what, but how, we read. In lively prose, she explores work that has already been done, both within and beyond the academy, and challenges readers to think about where we go from here. She suggests ways to recognize and respond to the political work that texts do, considering questions of language and translation, comparative reading, ideological argument, and genre in relation to the history of anticolonial struggle. Above all, Bernard shows that although we still have far to go, the work of decolonizing literary studies is already under way. Decolonizing Literature is a must-have resource for all those concerned by the development and future of the field.
Decolonizing Middle Level Literacy Instruction: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Methods
by Michael Domínguez Robyn SeglemThis text offers pre-service and in-service teachers pragmatic strategies for teaching middle-grades literacy in culturally proactive and sustaining ways. By demystifying big ideas and complex concepts, Domínguez and Seglem provide clear pathways and lessons for illuminating and engaging with race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in the middle-grade English Language Arts classroom. While addressing social justice, equity, diversity, and liberation can seem intimidating or unrelated to classroom practice, the authors demonstrate how weaving such questions into instruction benefits students’ development. The guidance, strategies, and lessons in this book provide an answer to the question: What does decolonial literacy teaching look like? Concrete but not prescriptive, the authors encourage us to reconsider accepted logics of schooling, so that we can better support adolescents as they navigate complex identity landscapes. Bringing together disparate conversations around reading, writing, identity, and decolonial thinking, and specifically tailored to the middle grades, this book serves as a comprehensive toolkit for praxis and covers such topics as cultural change, community connections, and racial literacy. Each chapter features tips on reading and writing instruction, Teacher Spotlights, Planning Questions, and Additional Resources to make it easy for educators to apply the strategies to their own contexts. An accessible entry to addressing challenging questions around identity in the classroom, this book is essential reading in courses and professional development on ELA and literacy methods as well as teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. For teachers looking to push toward equity and reshape literacy education so that it serves all middle-grade students, Domínguez and Seglem offer plenty of accessible and motivating places to start.
Decolonizing Middle Level Literacy Instruction: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Methods
by Michael Domínguez Robyn SeglemThis text offers pre-service and in-service teachers pragmatic strategies for teaching middle-grades literacy in culturally proactive and sustaining ways. By demystifying big ideas and complex concepts, Domínguez and Seglem provide clear pathways and lessons for illuminating and engaging with race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in the middle-grade English Language Arts classroom. While addressing social justice, equity, diversity, and liberation can seem intimidating or unrelated to classroom practice, the authors demonstrate how weaving such questions into instruction benefits students’ development. The guidance, strategies, and lessons in this book provide an answer to the question: What does decolonial literacy teaching look like? Concrete but not prescriptive, the authors encourage us to reconsider accepted logics of schooling, so that we can better support adolescents as they navigate complex identity landscapes. Bringing together disparate conversations around reading, writing, identity, and decolonial thinking, and specifically tailored to the middle grades, this book serves as a comprehensive toolkit for praxis and covers such topics as cultural change, community connections, and racial literacy. Each chapter features tips on reading and writing instruction, Teacher Spotlights, Planning Questions, and Additional Resources to make it easy for educators to apply the strategies to their own contexts. An accessible entry to addressing challenging questions around identity in the classroom, this book is essential reading in courses and professional development on ELA and literacy methods as well as teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. For teachers looking to push toward equity and reshape literacy education so that it serves all middle-grade students, Domínguez and Seglem offer plenty of accessible and motivating places to start.
Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy
by Iris D. Ruiz Raúl SánchezThis book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that have been misused or appropriated by forces working against the interests of minority students. For example, in educational and political forums, rhetorics of identity and civil rights have been used to justify ideas and policies that reaffirm the myth of a normative US culture that is white, Eurocentric, and monolinguistically English. Such attempts amount to a project of neo-colonization, if we understand colonization to mean not only the taking of land but also the taking of culture, of which language is a crucial part. The editors introduce the concept of epistemic delinking and argue for its use in conceptualizing a kind of rhetorical and discursive decolonization, and contributors offer examples of this decolonization in action through detailed work on specific terms. Specifically, they draw on their training in rhetoric and on their own experiences as people of color to help reset the field's agenda. They also theorize new keywords to shed light on the great varieties of Latinx writing, rhetoric, and literacies that continue to emerge and circulate in the culture at large, in the hope that the field will feel more urgently the need to recognize, theorize, and teach the intersections of writing, pedagogy, and politics.
Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy
by Iris D. Ruiz Raúl SánchezThis book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that have been misused or appropriated by forces working against the interests of minority students. For example, in educational and political forums, rhetorics of identity and civil rights have been used to justify ideas and policies that reaffirm the myth of a normative US culture that is white, Eurocentric, and monolinguistically English. Such attempts amount to a project of neo-colonization, if we understand colonization to mean not only the taking of land but also the taking of culture, of which language is a crucial part. The editors introduce the concept of epistemic delinking and argue for its use in conceptualizing a kind of rhetorical and discursive decolonization, and contributors offer examples of this decolonization in action through detailed work on specific terms. Specifically, they draw on their training in rhetoric and on their own experiences as people of color tohelp reset the field's agenda. They also theorize new keywords to shed light on the great varieties of Latinx writing, rhetoric, and literacies that continue to emerge and circulate in the culture at large, in the hope that the field will feel more urgently the need to recognize, theorize, and teach the intersections of writing, pedagogy, and politics.
Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media
by Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas, and Stephen ShapiroLooking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film, and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, and Iraq, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velázquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville's Covehithe, Reza Negarestani's Cycolonopedia, Julio Ortega's novel Adiós, Ayacucho, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugués, Michael James Rowland, Steve McQueen, and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.
Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media
Looking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film, and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, and Iraq, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velázquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville's Covehithe, Reza Negarestani's Cycolonopedia, Julio Ortega's novel Adiós, Ayacucho, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugués, Michael James Rowland, Steve McQueen, and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.
Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions
by Aditya NigamDecolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions aims at disentangling theory from its exclusively Western provenance, drawing insights and concepts from other thought traditions, connecting to what it argues is a new global moment in the reconstitution of theory. The key argument, which is the point of departure of the book, is that any serious theorizing in the non-West should be fundamentally suspicious of any theory that only gives you one result-that four-fifths of the world does not and cannot do anything right. Everything in the non-West, from itsmodernity and secularism to its democracy and even capitalism, is always seen to be deficient. In other words, all it tells us is that we do not live up to the standards set by Western modernity. From this point of departure, it seeks to create a conceptual space outside (Western) modernity and capitalism, by insisting on a rethink of non-synchronous synchronicities. The book takes three key themes around which the whole story of modernity can be unraveled, namely the question of the political, capital and historical time, and secularism for a detailed discussion. It does so by bracketing, in a sense, the autobiographical story that Western modernity gives itself. In each case, it tries to show that past forms never simply disappear, without residue, to be fully supplanted by the modern, and merely applying theory produced in one context to another is, therefore, very misleading.
Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions
by Aditya NigamDecolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions aims at disentangling theory from its exclusively Western provenance, drawing insights and concepts from other thought traditions, connecting to what it argues is a new global moment in the reconstitution of theory. The key argument, which is the point of departure of the book, is that any serious theorizing in the non-West should be fundamentally suspicious of any theory that only gives you one result-that four-fifths of the world does not and cannot do anything right. Everything in the non-West, from itsmodernity and secularism to its democracy and even capitalism, is always seen to be deficient. In other words, all it tells us is that we do not live up to the standards set by Western modernity. From this point of departure, it seeks to create a conceptual space outside (Western) modernity and capitalism, by insisting on a rethink of non-synchronous synchronicities. The book takes three key themes around which the whole story of modernity can be unraveled, namely the question of the political, capital and historical time, and secularism for a detailed discussion. It does so by bracketing, in a sense, the autobiographical story that Western modernity gives itself. In each case, it tries to show that past forms never simply disappear, without residue, to be fully supplanted by the modern, and merely applying theory produced in one context to another is, therefore, very misleading.
Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation
by Kathryn BatchelorThe linguistically innovative aspect of Francophone African literature has been recognized and studied from a variety of angles over recent decades, yet little attention has been paid to what happens to such literature when it is translated into another language. Taking as its corpus all sub-Saharan Francophone African texts that have ever been published in English, this book explores the ways in which translators approach innovative features such as African-language borrowings, neologisms and other deliberate manipulations of French, depictions of sociolinguistic variation, and a variety of types of wordplay. The implications of their translation decisions are drawn out with reference to the broader significances that are often accorded to postcolonial literature, and earlier critics' calls for a decolonized translation practice are explored from both a practical and theoretical angle. These findings are used to push towards a detailed investigation of the postcolonial turn in translation studies, drawing on the work of key postcolonial theorists such has Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. This is a timely and incisive critical assessment of contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation.
Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation
by Kathryn BatchelorThe linguistically innovative aspect of Francophone African literature has been recognized and studied from a variety of angles over recent decades, yet little attention has been paid to what happens to such literature when it is translated into another language. Taking as its corpus all sub-Saharan Francophone African texts that have ever been published in English, this book explores the ways in which translators approach innovative features such as African-language borrowings, neologisms and other deliberate manipulations of French, depictions of sociolinguistic variation, and a variety of types of wordplay. The implications of their translation decisions are drawn out with reference to the broader significances that are often accorded to postcolonial literature, and earlier critics' calls for a decolonized translation practice are explored from both a practical and theoretical angle. These findings are used to push towards a detailed investigation of the postcolonial turn in translation studies, drawing on the work of key postcolonial theorists such has Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. This is a timely and incisive critical assessment of contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation.
Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition (PDF)
by Cynthia ChaseOriginally published in 1986. The ghastly fate of a drowned man brought to a lake's surface in Wordsworth's "Prelude" typifies a fundamental pattern in Romantic writing, argues Cynthia Chase. Disfiguration involves not only a departure from representation but a disruption of the logic of figure or form, a decomposition of the figures composing the text. Ultimately it manifests the conflict between a work's meaning and its mode of performance. By means of an intense engagement with texts in the romantic tradition, DECOMPOSING FIGURES rearticulates and recasts crucial concepts in recent literary theory, including the notion of the self-referential or self-reflexive nature of the literary work. Chase's readings show that, far from implying a privileged status, the work's self-reflexive structure entails its opacity, its inability to read itself, and the necessity of its decomposition.
Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition
by Cynthia ChaseOriginally published in 1986. The ghastly fate of a drowned man brought to a lake's surface in Wordsworth's "Prelude" typifies a fundamental pattern in Romantic writing, argues Cynthia Chase. Disfiguration involves not only a departure from representation but a disruption of the logic of figure or form, a decomposition of the figures composing the text. Ultimately it manifests the conflict between a work's meaning and its mode of performance. By means of an intense engagement with texts in the romantic tradition, DECOMPOSING FIGURES rearticulates and recasts crucial concepts in recent literary theory, including the notion of the self-referential or self-reflexive nature of the literary work. Chase's readings show that, far from implying a privileged status, the work's self-reflexive structure entails its opacity, its inability to read itself, and the necessity of its decomposition.
Deconstructing Ergativity: Two Types of Ergative Languages and Their Features (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax)
by Maria PolinskyNominative-accusative and ergative are two common alignment types found across languages. In the former type, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are expressed the same way, and differently from the object of a transitive. In ergative languages, the subject of an intransitive and the object of a transitive appear in the same form, the absolutive, and the transitive subject has a special, ergative, form. Ergative languages often follow very different patterns, thus evading a uniform description and analysis. A simple explanation for that has to do with the idea that ergative languages, much as their nominative-accusative counterparts, do not form a uniform class. In this book, Maria Polinsky argues that ergative languages instantiate two main types, the one where the ergative subject is a prepositional phrase (PP-ergatives) and the one with a noun-phrase ergative. Each type is internally consistent and is characterized by a set of well-defined properties. The book begins with an analysis of syntactic ergativity, which as Polinsky argues, is a manifestation of the PP-ergative type. Polinsky discusses diagnostic properties that define PPs in general and then goes to show that a subset of ergative expressions fit the profile of PPs. Several alternative analyses have been proposed to account for syntactic ergativity; the book presents and outlines these analyses and offers further considerations in support of the PP-ergativity approach. The book then discusses the second type, DP-ergative languages, and traces the diachronic connection between the two types. The book includes two chapters illustrating paradigm PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: Tongan and Tsez. The data used in these descriptions come from Polinsky's original fieldwork hence presenting new empirical facts from both languages.
DECONSTRUCTING ERGATIVITY OSCS C: Two Types of Ergative Languages and Their Features (Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax)
by Maria PolinskyNominative-accusative and ergative are two common alignment types found across languages. In the former type, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are expressed the same way, and differently from the object of a transitive. In ergative languages, the subject of an intransitive and the object of a transitive appear in the same form, the absolutive, and the transitive subject has a special, ergative, form. Ergative languages often follow very different patterns, thus evading a uniform description and analysis. A simple explanation for that has to do with the idea that ergative languages, much as their nominative-accusative counterparts, do not form a uniform class. In this book, Maria Polinsky argues that ergative languages instantiate two main types, the one where the ergative subject is a prepositional phrase (PP-ergatives) and the one with a noun-phrase ergative. Each type is internally consistent and is characterized by a set of well-defined properties. The book begins with an analysis of syntactic ergativity, which as Polinsky argues, is a manifestation of the PP-ergative type. Polinsky discusses diagnostic properties that define PPs in general and then goes to show that a subset of ergative expressions fit the profile of PPs. Several alternative analyses have been proposed to account for syntactic ergativity; the book presents and outlines these analyses and offers further considerations in support of the PP-ergativity approach. The book then discusses the second type, DP-ergative languages, and traces the diachronic connection between the two types. The book includes two chapters illustrating paradigm PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: Tongan and Tsez. The data used in these descriptions come from Polinsky's original fieldwork hence presenting new empirical facts from both languages.
Deconstructing History
by Alun MunslowIn Deconstructing History, Alun Munslow examines history in the postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history and historical practice as well as forwarding his own challenging theories. The book discusses issues of both empiricist and deconstruction positions and considers the arguments of major proponents of both stances, and includes: an examination of the character of historical evidence exploration of the role of historians discussion of the failure of traditional historical methods chapters on Hayden White and Michel Foucault an evaluation of the importance of historical narrative an up to date, comprehensive bibliography an extensive and helpful glossary of difficult key terms. Deconstructing History maps the philosophical field, outlines the controversies involved and assesses the merits of the deconstructionist position. He argues that instead of beginning with the past history begin with its representation by historians.
Deconstructing History
by Alun MunslowIn Deconstructing History, Alun Munslow examines history in the postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history and historical practice as well as forwarding his own challenging theories. The book discusses issues of both empiricist and deconstruction positions and considers the arguments of major proponents of both stances, and includes: an examination of the character of historical evidence exploration of the role of historians discussion of the failure of traditional historical methods chapters on Hayden White and Michel Foucault an evaluation of the importance of historical narrative an up to date, comprehensive bibliography an extensive and helpful glossary of difficult key terms. Deconstructing History maps the philosophical field, outlines the controversies involved and assesses the merits of the deconstructionist position. He argues that instead of beginning with the past history begin with its representation by historians.
Deconstructing Public Relations: Public Relations Criticism (Routledge Communication Series)
by Thomas J. MickeyThis volume provides a critical look at public relations practice, utilizing case studies from public relations, advertising, and marketing to illustrate the deconstruction and analysis of public relations campaigns. Author Thomas J. Mickey uses a cultural studies approach and demonstrates how it can be used as a critical theory for public relations practice, offering real-world examples to support his argument. Through the interpretive act of deconstruction, this book serves to challenge the myth of public relations as an objective "science," allowing the social importance of public relations to be redefined and encouraging public relations to take a fuller place in the interdisciplinary study of text and knowledge. Intended for public relations scholars and students in public relations cases/campaigns, public relations criticism, and media studies courses, Deconstructing Public Relations: Public Relations Criticism demystifies the act of deconstruction and shows how it can give insight into the theory and practice of public relations.
Deconstructing Public Relations: Public Relations Criticism (Routledge Communication Series)
by Thomas J. MickeyThis volume provides a critical look at public relations practice, utilizing case studies from public relations, advertising, and marketing to illustrate the deconstruction and analysis of public relations campaigns. Author Thomas J. Mickey uses a cultural studies approach and demonstrates how it can be used as a critical theory for public relations practice, offering real-world examples to support his argument. Through the interpretive act of deconstruction, this book serves to challenge the myth of public relations as an objective "science," allowing the social importance of public relations to be redefined and encouraging public relations to take a fuller place in the interdisciplinary study of text and knowledge. Intended for public relations scholars and students in public relations cases/campaigns, public relations criticism, and media studies courses, Deconstructing Public Relations: Public Relations Criticism demystifies the act of deconstruction and shows how it can give insight into the theory and practice of public relations.
Deconstructing the Enlightenment in Spanish America: Margins of Modernity
by Adam SharmanThis book is about Enlightenment culture in Spanish America before Independence—in short, there where, according to Hegel, one would least expect to find it. It explores the Enlightenment in texts from five cultural fields: science, history, the periodical press, law, and literature. Texts include the journals of the geodesic expedition to Quito, philosophical histories of the Americas, a year’s work from the Mercurio Peruano, the writings of Mariano Moreno, and Lizardi’s El periquillo sarniento. Each chapter takes one field, one body of writing, and one key question: Is modern science universal? Can one disavow the discourse of progress? What is a “Catholic” Enlightenment? Are Enlightenment reason and sovereignty monological? Must the individual be the normative subject of modernity? The book’s premise is that the above texts not only speak to the contradictions of a doubtless marginalised colonial American Ilustración but illuminate the constitutive aporias of the so-called modern project itself. Drawing on the work of Derrida, but also on both historical and philosophical accounts of the various Enlightenments, this incisive book will be of interest to students of Spanish America and scholars in the fields of postcolonialism and the Enlightenment.
Deconstructing True Crime Literature (Crime Files)
by Charlotte BarnesThis book provides a critical discussion of True Crime literature, arguing for the deconstruction of the genre into subgenres that better reflect a work’s contents. In analysing seminal and lesser-known works, the areas of authenticity, accuracy, and author proximity are considered to form a framework on which an individual publication’s subgenre (re)categorisation can be assessed. The book considers the likes of Ann Rule, Truman Capote, and Maggie Nelson, among other notable authors. Their works – those that fit into True Crime and those that defy categorisation within the genre as it exists – are reviewed, and their defining features critiqued. Topics such as narrative methodologies, figurative language, and utilisation of research are considered in support of this. These strands combine to a larger discussion regarding a deconstruction of True Crime, and the ways in which this will improve the social responsibility of the genre, and encourage a more conscientious consumerism of it.
Deconstruction: An American Institution
by Gregory Jones-KatzThe basic story of the rise, reign, and fall of deconstruction as a literary and philosophical groundswell is well known among scholars. In this intellectual history, Gregory Jones-Katz aims to transform the broader understanding of a movement that has been frequently misunderstood, mischaracterized, and left for dead—even as its principles and influence transformed literary studies and a host of other fields in the humanities. Deconstruction begins well before Jacques Derrida’s initial American presentation of his deconstructive work in a famed lecture at Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and continues through several decades of theoretic growth and tumult. While much of the subsequent story remains focused, inevitably, on Yale University and the personalities and curriculum that came to be lumped under the “Yale school” umbrella, Deconstruction makes clear how crucial feminism, queer theory, and gender studies also were to the lifeblood of this mode of thought. Ultimately, Jones-Katz shows that deconstruction in the United States—so often caricatured as a French infection—was truly an American phenomenon, rooted in our preexisting political and intellectual tensions, that eventually came to influence unexpected corners of scholarship, politics, and culture.
Deconstruction: An American Institution
by Gregory Jones-KatzThe basic story of the rise, reign, and fall of deconstruction as a literary and philosophical groundswell is well known among scholars. In this intellectual history, Gregory Jones-Katz aims to transform the broader understanding of a movement that has been frequently misunderstood, mischaracterized, and left for dead—even as its principles and influence transformed literary studies and a host of other fields in the humanities. Deconstruction begins well before Jacques Derrida’s initial American presentation of his deconstructive work in a famed lecture at Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and continues through several decades of theoretic growth and tumult. While much of the subsequent story remains focused, inevitably, on Yale University and the personalities and curriculum that came to be lumped under the “Yale school” umbrella, Deconstruction makes clear how crucial feminism, queer theory, and gender studies also were to the lifeblood of this mode of thought. Ultimately, Jones-Katz shows that deconstruction in the United States—so often caricatured as a French infection—was truly an American phenomenon, rooted in our preexisting political and intellectual tensions, that eventually came to influence unexpected corners of scholarship, politics, and culture.
Deconstruction: Theory and Practice
by Christopher NorrisDeconstruction: Theory and Practice has been acclaimed as by far the most readable, concise and authoritative guide to this topic. Without oversimplifying or glossing over the challenges, Norris makes deconstruction more accessible to the reader. The volume focuses on the works of Jacques Derrida which caused this seismic shift in critical thought, as well as the work of North American critics Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller and Harold Bloom.In this third, revised edition, Norris builds on his 1991 Afterword with an entirely new Postscript, reflecting upon recent critical debate. The Postscript includes an extensive list of recommended reading, complementing what was already one of the most useful bibliographies available.