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Theory Does Not Exist
Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric
By Paul Allen Miller
A wide-ranging collection of essays that makes the case for the humanities as central to our self-understanding, for theory as the latest incarnation of a perennial concern with the relation between words and things, and for the ancient as constitutive of the modern.
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About This Book
This book is a wide-ranging collection of essays that makes the case for the humanities as central to our self-understanding, for theory as the latest incarnation of a perennial concern with the relation between words and things, and for the ancient as constitutive of the modern. Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric makes a strong argument for a comparative approach to what we term “theory” today. It argues that our disciplinary boundaries create artificial divisions between philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, which historically would not have been recognized and have come to function as conceptual straitjackets.
These essays contend that a concerted engagement with the crucial texts in these debates over the last 2500 years not only offers a better understanding of the issues involved but also provides the necessary political, ethical, and existential tools for fashioning a better and more inclusive life. They offer extended readings of Plato, Cicero, and Sophocles, as well as Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Žižek, and Lacan. Theory Does Not Exist offers a full-throated defense of the humanities and crucial counterarguments against the reduction of education to the vocational and the operational.
Reviews
‘A rich and distinctive collection of related essays by an erudite comparatist who moves with ease between classics and contemporaries. Miller is in a far better position than most to elucidate and critique modern theoretical, critical, and philological engagements of (mainly) the powerful French theorists from the 1960s to today with the likes of Plato and Cicero. With acuity, verve, and wit, Miller explores the precarious boundaries of philosophy, literature, and rhetoric in and through what got to be called theory. The performance of Miller’s text is a compelling, embodied argument of and for the impertinence of such boundaries.’ —Ian G. Balfour, Professor Emeritus of English and Social & Political Thought, York University, Canada.
‘Paul Allen Miller has changed the humanities by unconventionally bringing together antiquity and modernity, by illustrating not only the deep engagement of postmodern thinkers with the classical past but also how ancient philosophy and poetry preview and enact before our eyes the concerns and ideas of postmodernism. What he has accomplished in his career is prodigious. In the essays gathered here, both rigorous and magnificently adventurous, he integrates the philosophical and the literary in surprising ways, brilliantly demonstrating the political power of critical theoretical thinking in our times.’ —Mario Telò, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, USA.
‘In twelve essays of dazzling erudition, intellectual sophistication, and argumentative panache, Paul Allen Miller makes a timely defense of the humanities as fields of study that investigate the possibility of meaning and the meaning of truth. Theory does not exist as a bounded space of reflection, but as open-ended dialogues between historically and culturally nuanced discourses that shape both our self-awareness and a truly democratic ethos.’ —Zina Giannopoulou, Associate Professor, Classics | European Languages and Studies | Religious Studies, University of California, Irvine, USA.
Author Information
Paul Allen Miller is Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina and Distinguished Guest Professor at Ewha Womans University. He has authored ten books and numerous articles.
Series
Anthem symploke Studies in Theory
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Theory Does Not Exist: An Introduction; Chapter 1 Debits and Credits or Accounting for My Life: A Defense of Reading and Humanistic Education; Chapter 2 The Trouble with Theory: A Comparatist Manifesto; Chapter 3 Placing the Self in the Field of Truth: Irony and Self-Fashioning in Ancient and Postmodern Rhetorical Theory; Chapter 4 Rhetoric and Deconstruction: Plato, the Sophists, and Philosophy; Chapter 5 The Platonic Remainder: Derrida’s Khôra and the Corpus Platonicum; Chapter 6 Cicero Reads Derrida Reading Cicero: A Politics and a Friendship to Come; Chapter 7 On Borders, Race, and Infinite Hospitality: Foucault, Derrida, and Camus; Chapter 8 Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Aint Got Das Ding; Chapter 9 Enjoyment beyond the Pleasure Principle: Antigone, Julian of Norwich, and the Use of Pleasures; Chapter 10 Lacan le con: Luce Tells Jacques Off; Chapter 11 The Repeatable and the Unrepeatable: Žižek and the Future of the Humanities, or Assessing Socrates; Chapter 12 Theory Does Not Exist; Index
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