By Dani Cavallaro
This radical, new publication brings jointly the main suggestions, concerns and debates in severe and cultural thought this present day. every one bankruptcy offers a self-contained research of every suggestion in addition supplying a variety of dialogue questions and extra studying. all through, text-links attach similar fabric throughout chapters, permitting the reader to pursue their very own line of disciplinary or cross-disciplinary inquiry.
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Extra resources for Critical and Cultural Theory: Thematic Variations
Sample text
In conceiving of language as a system, semiotics has encouraged the emergence of critical approaches that view individual texts as manifestations of a broader narrative system. Saussure's aversion to the historical study of language has sustained forms of criticism that steer away from the historical assessment of texts. At the same time, Saussure's emphasis on the arbitrary character of the sign and his rejection of the notion of language as a reflection of reality have contributed to a radical questioning of the ethos of 18 THE SIGN realism.
6 It questions the principle of mimesis (according to which texts are capable of faithfully reflecting reality) by stressing that reality is always an effect of how it is represented, interpreted and distorted. When we think we are looking at a faithful reflection of reality, we are actually dealing with an interpretation - more or less biased - of reality. Hence, 'we need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things' (Derrida 1978: 278). It is in the field of historiography that reality is most blatantly distorted and yet presented as an objective chain of facts.
Writing has been used as something of a scapegoat to conceal the ambiguity and unreliablity of any form of signification. Paul de Man (1919-83) pursues a related argument. Writing (especially literature broadly conceived) has conventionally been regarded with suspicion because of its association with rhetorical 7 >^~ These ideas are outlined in Part I, Chapter 2, The Sign'. 35 LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION language, with devices that unsettle consistency and logic. Critical theory has accordingly been opposed because of its involvement with literature and writing in general, and because of its own use of tropes.
