Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France

by Jeffrey Mehlman

Overview

In this book, Jeffrey Mehlman dwells on the series of enigmas surrounding the "Blanchot affair", in which one of the leading figures of contemporary French thought was shown to have been a prominent fascist journalist during the 1930s. Using this as a point of departure, Mehlman investigates the ideological and political connotations of similar literary material, shedding new light on the question of the usability of psychoanalysis for literary readings. The volume provides a provocative meditation on literature, ethics, and the experience of the French in World War II.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521472135
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/28/1995
Series:	Cambridge Studies in French , #54
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. Craniometry and criticism: notes on a Valéryan criss-cross; 3. Literature and hospitality: Klossowski's Hamann; 4. Literature and collaboration: Benoist-Méchin's return to Proust; 5. 'Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote' again; 6. Iphigenia 38: deconstruction, history and the case of L'Arrêt de mort; 7. Writing and deference: the politics of literary adulation; 8. Perspectives: on Paul de Man and Le Soir; 9. Prosopopeia revisited; 10. The paranoid style in French prose: Lacan with Léon Bloy; 11. The Holocaust comedies of 'Emile Ajar'; 12. Pour Sainte-Beuve: Maurice Blanchot, 10 March 1942; 13. Flowers of evil: Paul Morand, the Collaboration and literary history; Appendix; Notes; Index; Series list.

Editorial Reviews

"This dazzling exercise in political and ideological criticism combines recondite scholarship and an esoteric style in pursuit of a polemical and controversial argument....[it] offers numerous valuable insights into the historical horizen of French modernism....Mehlman's illumination of a wide range of texts and issues—-from Sainte-Beuve's politics to Blanchot's secret political mythology and the hidden agenda of de Man's reading of Hugo—makes this book and authoritative and indispensable contribution to the study of modern French culture." Choice

From the Publisher