Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of DestructionU of Minnesota Press, 1993 - 335 pages In "Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction", William Spanos examines the controversy, both in Europe and the United States, surrounding Heidegger and recent disclosures about his Nazi past. Not intended as a defense or apology for Heidegger's thought, Spanos instead affirms the importance of Heidegger's "antihumanist" interrogation of the modern age, its globalization of technology, and its neo-imperialist politics. The attack on Heidegger's "antihumanistic" discourse (by "liberal humanists" who have imported the European debate into the United States) aligns ideologically with the ongoing policing operations of William Bennett, Allan Bloom, E.D. Hirsch, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D'Souza, and others in the spheres of higher education and cultural production. Throughout his arguments, Spanos focuses not so much on Heidegger the historical subject, as on the transformative cultural and political discourses and practices, implicit in and enabled by Heidegger's interrogations of Being and Time, that have led to the contemporary emergence of the multiplicity of resistant "Others" colonized by hegemonic discursive formations. All the while he reminds us that Heidegger's philosophic interrogations eventually generate a diverse body of transgressive writing and an oppositional intellectual climate in the West. Spanos is author of "Repetitions: the Postmodern Occasion in Literature and Culture" (1987) and "The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism" (Minnesota, 1992), and the editor of "Martin Heidegger and the Question in Literature" (1980) and the co-editor of "The Question of Textuality: Strategies of Reading in Contemporary American Criticism" (1982). This book is intended for those in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, political theory. |
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Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction William V. Spanos No preview available - 1993 |
Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction William V. Spanos No preview available - 1993 |
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aesthetic affiliation American analysis Auschwitz being-in-the-world Charles Olson circular concept constitutes context Critical Inquiry critique cultural Dasein Davidson's deconstruction difference disciplinary society disclosed discursive practices dominant essay essence essential existential Farías's gas chambers genealogy ger's German Greek hegemony Heidegger's destruction Heidegger's discourse Heidegger's texts Heidegger's thought Heideggerian hermeneutic circle historically specific humanist I. A. Richards ideological imperial inscribed interpretation interrogation Jacques Derrida Kierkegaard Lacoue-Labarthe language liberal literature logocentric Martin Heidegger Marxism means metaphorics metaphysical Michel Foucault modern Nazi Nazism Nietzsche ontological ontotheological tradition panoptic Parmenides Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe political possibility posthumanist postmodern postmodern literature primordial privileged question radical reading recollection reduced reference relay repetition representation represented repressive hypothesis retrieval Roman sense simply social sociopolitical Søren Kierkegaard Spanos spatial structure suggests temporality textuality thematizes theory thinking tion trans truth understanding University Press Vietnam Vietnamese violence Western words world picture writing York