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- Ullén, Magnus
(author)
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En ironisk historia : Paul de Man och historiebegreppet
- 2004
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In: Samlaren. - Uppsala : Svenska Litteratursällskapet. - 0348-6133 .- 2002-3871. ; 125, s. 204-236
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Magnus Ullén, En ironisk historia. Paul de Man och historiebegreppet. (An Ironic (Hi)story. Paul de Man and the Concept of History.) This essay is an exposition of Paul de Man’s understanding of the concept of history, and argues for the continued relevance of his mode of reading. In the process, it traces the relation between his early notion of the interrelatedness of blindness and insight, with his later notion of the complementarity of allegory and irony. Following the introduction, a section on "The Nature of Reading" presents de Man’s concept of reading as an act that is intrinsic to the notion of the text as such – that is why de Man can argue that the text deconstructs itself. Two subsequent sections, "Derrida and the Blindness of Insight" and "The Double Temporality of Misunderstanding," explicate this notion of reading and the way it relates to de Man’s critique of the concept of history by means of an analysis of de Man’s reading of Derrida in "The Rhetoric of Blindness." It is shown that de Man’s critique of Derrida is in part self-contradictory, yet these contradictions are read not as faults, but as a strategy devised to meet the ironical paradox that de Man’s own essay shows to be an inescapable feature of the critical discourse. Sharing the view of Derrida (held, according to de Man, by Rousseau as well) that no unmediated knowledge of reality is possible, it is the conviction of de Man that every attempt at understanding existence is in truth inevitably a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding derives from the double temporality characteristic of the text. The attempt to waylay this double temporality by means of the notion of the hermeneutical circle, which would appear to allow the critic to establish a concord between the beginning and end of the interpretive process, in de Man’s view is insufficient in that it can be shown to achieve this effect only by transposing temporality into a linguistic register, in e.ect turning temporality into a sign. A genuine attempt to devise a history of literature must try to develop a strategy for dealing with this ironical situation without simply rejecting it. The penultimate section, "An Ironical (Hi)story," reads "The Rhetoric of Temporality" as a concrete attempt to write a literary history informed by such a strategic misunderstanding of the ironical foundation of the concept of history. Special attention is paid to the structure of the essay, particularly the way its second section constitutes a kind of cognitive stuttering, which keeps insisting that the tropes of allegory and irony are linked to each other, and that irony in turn is linked to the development of the novel. While this stuttering signals irony’s inability to depart from the realm of the present, the recurring references to the novel, it is argued, constitute a kind of inescapable historical modulation of this insight, ironizing irony in the very process of presenting it. While thus manifestly unable to eschew the historical perspective altogether, it is argued that de Man’s critical practice nevertheless substantially transforms the concept of history, by making clear that the historical dimension of the text necessarily coincides with the act of reading itself. History, in this view, is not an object temporally distinct from the present moment, but should be seen as an ongoing process, in relation to which any act of reading is always an intervention. The closing section, "Deconstruction as Critical Theory," briefly suggests the historical case for treating de Man’s brand of deconstruction as a radical critique. Romanticism, it is suggested, can be looked upon as a response to a crisis in historical consciousness, brought on by the individualization of Christian faith. This crisis is even more apparent in contemporary society, manifested, for instance, in the eternal present evoked by advertising. In the all but a-historical moment of a society enwrapped in such myths, the essay concludes, the continued relevance of de Man’s critical perspective is all too apparent.
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