The concept of textuality in recent decades has come to designate a fundamentally contested terrain within a number of academic disciplines. How it came to occupy this position is the subject of John Mowitt's book, a critical genealogy of the social and intellectual conditions that contributed to the emergence of the textual object.Beginning with the Tel Quel group in France in the sixties and seventies, Mowitt's study details how a certain interdisciplinary crisis prompted academics to rethink the conditions of cultural interpretation. Concentrating on three disciplinary projects—literary analysis, film studies, and musicology—Mowitt shows how textuality's emergence called into question not merely the relations among these disciplines, but also the cultural logic of disciplinary reason as such.At once an effort to define "the text" and to explore and extend the theory of textuality, this book illustrates why the notion of interdisciplinary research has recently acquired such urgency. At the same time, by emphasizing the genealogical dimension of the textual object, Mowitt raises the issues of its "antidisciplinary" character, and by extension its immediate pertinence for the current debates over multiculturalism and Eurocentrism.
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"This book analyzes and provides a history of the `theory of the text,' which has been a central doctrine in literary and cultural criticism over the past twenty-five or so years. This is a project which to my knowledge has not been systematically attempted by any other scholar, and Mowitt's discussion is subtle, deft, and provocative."—Richard Terdiman, University of California, Santa Cruz
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822312734
Publisert
1992-09-18
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
408 gr
Aldersnivå
UP, G, 05, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

John Mowitt is Associate Professor of Humanities and English at the University of Minnesota.