Analogies of Deconstruction: J. Hillis Miller’s Uncanny Pedagogy

Main Article Content

Péter Csató

Abstract

The article focuses on theoretical texts from J. Hillis Miller’s “middle period,” written between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, at the heyday of the Yale school of deconstruction. Besides his multifaceted oeuvre, Miller’s fame arguably rests mainly on the theoretical and critical work he produced as a “Yale Critic,” alongside Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, with Jacques Derrida. The study analyses two of Miller’s most influential (and controversial) texts in more detail: “Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure, II” (1976) and “On Edge: The Crossways of Contemporary Criticism” (1979). The choice of texts has been motivated by the fact that they contain some of the most eloquent and lucid explications, via vividly imaginative analogies, of how deconstruction as a “method” works. Analyzing Miller’s illuminating analogies of criticism, the paper demonstrates that his lucidity is bound to get in the way of the deconstructive enterprise he is supposed to promote, producing inconsistencies and anomalous arguments in his texts. I will argue, however, that the anomalies stem from the fact that Miller’s pedagogical urge to share knowledge is stronger than his commitment to the actual practice of deconstruction. He must ground his explications in a coherent narrative to make them communicable, while at the same time he has to defend the deconstructive thesis that positing such grounding principles is constantly undermined by treacherous workings of language.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Csató, Péter. 2022. “Analogies of Deconstruction: J. Hillis Miller’s Uncanny Pedagogy”. AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary 18 (1). https://iskolakultura.hu/index.php/americanaejournal/article/view/45477.
Section
Essays
Author Biography

Péter Csató, North American Department, University of Debrecen

Péter Csató is assistant professor in the North American Department of the University of Debrecen. He earned his PhD in 2009 from the University of Debrecen for his dissertation on the philosophy of Richard Rorty. He was Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Cornell University in 2001-02, and Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2015. He has also taught at the University of Bristol and St. Mary’s University London-Twickenham. Péter Csató’s academic interests include European and American philosophy, theories of interpretation, contemporary American prose fiction, and the philosophy of science. He is author of a scholarly monograph, Antipodean Dialogues: Richard Rorty and the Discursive Authority of Conversational Philosophy (Debrecen University Press, 2013), and journal articles related to American prose fiction, questions of interpretation and interpretability in the context of literary theory and criticism. Email: csato.peter@arts.unideb.hu