Irony on occasion : from Schlegel and Kierkegaard to Derrida and de Man

382 Pages·2012·1.75 MB·English

by  Newmark

Irony on Occasion
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Irony on Occasion
From Schlegel and Kierkegaard
to Derrida and de Man
Kevin Newmark
fordham university press
new york 2012
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Copyright © 2012 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newmark, Kevin, 1951–
Irony on occasion : from Schlegel and Kierkegaard to Derrida
and de Man / Kevin Newmark. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8232-4012-8 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-8232-4013-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Irony in litera-
ture. 2. Irony. 3. Literature—Philosophy. 4. Philosophy in
literature. 5. Romanticism. 6. Deconstruction. 7. C riticism.
8. Literature, Modern—History and criticism—Theory, etc.
I. Title. II. Title: Schlegel and Kierkegaard to Derrida and
de Man.
pn56.I65n49 2012
809′.918—dc23
2011037021
Printed in the United States of America
14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
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contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Irony on Occasion 1
part i. romantic irony
1. Friedrich Schlegel and the Myth of Irony 15
2. Taking Kierkegaard Apart: The Concept of Irony 41
3. Modernity Interrupted: Kierkegaard’s Antigone 66
4. Reading Kierkegaard: To Keep Intact the Secret 96
5. Fear and Trembling: “Who Is Able to Understand Abraham?” 121
part ii. postromantic irony
6. Signs of the Times: Nietzsche, Deconstruction,
and the Truth of History 149
7. Death in Venice: Irony, Detachment, and the Aesthetic State 177
8. Terrible Flowers: Jean Paulhan and the Irony of Rhetoric 203
part iii. the irony of tomorrow
9. On Parole: Legacies of Saussure, Blanchot, and Paulhan 223
10. “What Is Happening Today in Deconstruction” 242
11. Bewildering: Paul de Man, Poetry, Politics 261
Coda: Dark Freedom in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace 282
Notes 297
Index 351
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acknowledgments
Many of the people I never met, it goes without saying, played a crucial role
in the elaboration of this book. A number of colleagues and students with
whom I have worked or crossed paths at lectures, conferences, and in class-
rooms have contributed in ways that would be diffi cult to circumscribe with
precision. Others have helped more directly. Over the years, Dick Macksey
provided regular access to the pages of MLN with easy-going yet gracious
benevolence. Hillis Miller, who was the fi rst to suggest I write a book on
irony, was also among those who most recently encouraged me to publish
one. Still others—Birgit Baldwin, Pat de Man, Ted Fraser, Georgia Albert,
François Raffoul, Madeleine Dobie, Wayne Klein, Ora Avni, Matilda Bruck-
ner, Jonathan Ree, Scott Carpenter, Luca Pes, Michael Syrotinski, Lawrence
Kritzman, Jonathan Culler, Mark O’Connor, Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús, Va-
nessa Rumble, Jon Stewart, Martin McQuillan, Patsy de Man, Lindsay Wa-
ters, Werner Hamacher, Ethan Wells, Liz Rottenberg, Ann Miller, Helen
Tartar—generously provided me with specifi c occasions to think and write a
little more about irony. An abiding fascination with literature and philosophy,
as distinct from any scholarly pretensions, made it nearly inevitable that I
would one day encounter irony in the work of Paul de Man and Jacques Der-
rida. A happy coincidence permitted me to discover their writings by having
them as teachers over the course of several all-too-short years. For a longer
period of time now, I have benefi tted from the intellectual friendship offered
me by Cathy Caruth, Ellen Burt—who gave me a nudge at a key moment—
and Andrzej Warminski, who has been an uninterrupted force of dialogue. At
home—provided one bears in mind that “home” is more likely than not the
fi rst thing that will have been irremediably altered whenever irony makes its
abode there—at home, then, I have been singularly blessed by having been
vii
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viii Acknowledgments
taken only slightly more seriously than my work by Hannah, Paul, Helen,
and, of course, Moses and Seamus. Unless, unbeknownst to me, it was the
other way around. To each and all I am infi nitely indebted.
As far as institutions go, I am grateful for the support I received on various
occasions from both Yale University and Boston College. A special word of
thanks is due to David Quigley, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Boston Col-
lege, for the alacrity with which he helped to arrange a subsidy for the prepa-
ration of an index. Early versions of some chapters have appeared in print;
permission to publish later versions here is gratefully acknowledged. Chap-
ter 1 originally appeared as “L’Absolu littéraire: Friedrich Schlegel and the
Myth of Irony,” MLN 107:5 (December 1992). An earlier version of chapter 2
was published as “Taking Kierkegaard Apart,” diacritics 17:1 (spring 1987).
Chapter 3 appeared as “Secret Agents: After Kierkegaard’s Subject,” MLN
112:5 (December 1997). An earlier version of chapter 5 was published as “Be-
tween Hegel and Kierkegaard: The Space of Translation,” Genre 16:4 (winter
1983), and the chapter is published by permission of the University of Okla-
homa. Chapter 6 appeared originally as “Nietzsche, Deconstruction, and the
Truth of History,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal of the New School for
Social Research 15:2 (fall 1991). An earlier version of chapter 8 was published
as “Practically Impossible: Jean Paulhan and Post-Romantic Irony,” paral-
lax 9 ( October–December 1998). Chapter 9 was published as “On Parole:
Blanchot, Saussure, Paulhan,” Yale French Studies 106 (December 2004). An
earlier version of chapter 10, titled “Deconstruction,” appeared in The Colum-
bia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, edited by Lawrence D. Kritz-
man with the assistance of Brian Reilly and with translations by Malcolm
DeBevoise, copyright © 2006 Columbia University Press; the chapter is pub-
lished here by permission of the Press. Chapter 11 appeared originally as “Be-
wildering: Paul de Man, Poetry, Politics,” MLN 124:5 (December 2009).
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Without the occasion, nothing really happens, and yet the occasion has no
part in what happens.
—søren kierkegaard
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