Description:
Reading both philosophical and literary texts, this book shows that it is possible to move past the endless discussions of the impasse of postmodernity or the collapse of reason, and see that deconstruction leads not to nihilism but to the "triumph of the other" that has been violently excluded from traditional subject-centered philosophy.
In The Rhetoric of Failure, Ewa Ziarek offers a bold rethinking of deconstruction, modernism, and post-structural ethics. Bringing philosophical rigor and literary sensitivity into rare alignment, Ziarek stages an original confrontation between major thinkers--Cavell, Derrida, Levinas, and Benjamin--and modernist writers such as Kafka, Beckett, and Gombrowicz. The result is a powerful challenge to the familiar view of deconstruction as a philosophy of impossibility, nihilism, or communicative collapse. Against interpretations that read modernist skepticism as the negation of meaning or ethical responsibility, Ziarek argues that the "failure" of subject-centered rationality marks something far more affirmative: the refusal to exclude or annihilate the other. Failure, in this sense, becomes a site of ethical significance, aesthetic invention, and renewed community rather than despair.
Through close, lucid readings that move fluidly between philosophy and literature, The Rhetoric of Failure demonstrates that deconstruction leads neither to linguistic solipsism nor to moral paralysis. Instead, it opens the possibility of writing--and thinking--otherwise. A significant and timely contribution to debates in literary theory, modernism, and post-structural ethics, this book will be essential reading for scholars of philosophy, literature, and critical theory.
Brief description: Ewa Plonowska Ziarek is Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of The Rhetoric of Failure: Deconstruction of Skepticism, Reinvention of Modernism, also published by SUNY Press.
Review Quotes:
"There are many books on the links between deconstruction and literary modernism, but I know of no work that undertakes so detailed a confrontation between a series of major thinkers (Cavell, Derrida, Levinas, Benjamin) and writers (Kafka, Beckett, Gombrowicz). The strategy is an original one. It is rare that a critic has the kind of dual sensibility that is needed to carry it off." -- Alexander Gelley, University of California, Irvine
"This book makes a significant and needed contribution to post-structural philosophy and literary theory. In this impressive analysis that delicately weaves together philosophical and literary texts, Ewa Ziarek powerfully and persuasively demonstrates that the rhetoric of the failure of traditional subject-centered rationality does not lead to nihilism or nominalism. Against accepted interpretations of Derrida, Kafka, and Beckett, that see them as prophets of impossibility, violence, and misunderstanding, Ziarek offers an alternative interpretation that opens up the possibility of writing otherwise. The Rhetoric of Failure makes a significant and timely contribution to debates over the possibility of post-structural ethics.
"Ziarek argues that the skepticism of the discourses of the failure of subject-centered rationality is not a traditional skepticism that denies all truth or meaning. Instead, she reads the failure of the subject-centered discourse as the failure to exclude or annihilate the other. In this way, the rhetoric of failure is the triumph of the other that has been violently excluded from traditional subject-centered philosophy. Ziarek skillfully demonstrates that deconstruction leads to neither linguistic immanence nor communicative immanence. Ziarek's readings are original, persuasive and beautifully presented." -- Kelly Oliver, University of Texas at Austin