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de Man did not address what the university now calls “multiculturalism.” But this term specifies the stakes of de Man’s last essays, especially as explicated by and expanded upon in this new collection: textual “material events” breach the aesthetic erasures of otherness that contemporary academic institutions (and their governmental and transnational corporate sponsors) thrive on while asserting their commitment to “diversity.” Indeed, the example of “diversity” helps to define the import of Material Events. In this regard, the university’s pursuit of knowledge may truly participate in an exercise of Eurocentric, now actually USA-centric, power.
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Many, but not all, instructors and researchers who want to be effectively progressive may be disturbed by the editors’ claim that aesthetic ideology dominates the contemporary university.ĭe Man’s study of aesthetic ideology interrogates a key procedure of higher education: the aestheticization of singularities to render them as knowable, exchangeable representatives. But Material Events, which examines the relevance of de Man’s arguments to psychoanalysis, political science, and law, should not only irritate academics impatient to conserve traditions and the boundaries between them. Material Events will upset academics skeptical of “theory” in general and of “deconstruction” in particular (however, this collection reminds us why “theory” is not the best term to define “deconstruction”). With contributions by Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Arkady Plotnitsky, and Barbara Johnson, this volume is one of the most important responses to Paul de Man’s work, especially the posthumous Aesthetic Ideology, yet published. Material Events includes path-breaking essays that examine Cézanne’s paintings, Hitchcock’s films, and Descarte’s notions about the body.
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Pasadena City of: Tom Cohen, et al., eds., Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory.Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.Īs we confront the triumph of USA-centrism (“institutionalize diversity locally, maximize profit globally”), to trace our historicity, defined by punctual “material events,” we need to contest what Paul de Man calls “aesthetic ideology.” So argues Material Events, co-edited by Tom Cohen, Barbara Cohen, J.