Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy (review)

Abstract

BOOK NOTES ment in mind. Accordingly, in a first part entitled "Les salons de l'écriture," the author emphasizes conversation as the formative figure ofSainte-Beuve's writing. In a close analysis ofhis early work Vie, Poésie et Pensées de Joseph Delorme, Verona shows how even as Sainte-Beuve aspired to assure for himselfthe place of the author, the rhythms of conversation and oral debate pervert and frustrate his dream of canonicity. The failure ofJoseph Delorme would lead Sainte-Beuve to abandon this dream and forge a different future for himself. An instance ofmarginalization himself, in his critical phase Sainte-Beuve is particularly attracted to marginal cases and genres. It is this attraction that led him to devote many ofhis Portraits to women writers and salonières. Writing about women that were famous for their conversation such as la Princesse Mathilde and Juliette de Récamier, Sainte-Beuve enters into conversation with them and becomes a chronicler ofhis time. Looking back toward an earlier period in French letters, Sainte-Beuve chose to write about women who lived between the Ancien Régime and the new world of the Revolution, such as Madame de Souza, Claire de Duras, Juliana de Kruderer, and Pauline Guizot. Having transformed a failed authorship into a critical interest in marginal writing, Sainte-Beuve, argues Verona, laid the ground for today's inquiry into feminine writing. One conclusion that Les 'salons ' de Sainte-Beuve suggests is that Sainte-Beuve's most important legacy is also perhaps the least noticed one. Namely, rather than leaving behind canonical opinions or definitive monographs, Sainte-Beuve wrote in a way that influenced the very medium of criticism, by leaving his mark on the essay as a critical genre, which becomes a space ofencounter in which works are allowed to exist in their full complexity. Gina FischUniversity ofColorado, Boulder SAMUEL C. WHEELER. Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy. Stanford : Stanford UP, 2000. 294 pp. Samuel Wheeler, Professor ofPhilosophy at the University ofConnecticut, begins his book with an anecdote, relating how he once offered Jacques Derrida a copy of Saul Kripke's seminal Naming and Necessity (Harvard, 1972). Derrida demurred that he had tried to read it once before, but couldn't fathom what was going on, preferring instead the clarity ofHeidegger. This anecdote underlines the lack ofreal dialogue between analytic philosophy, which dominates Anglo-American philosophy , and continental philosophy. Indeed many American and British philosophers follow the early lead of A.J. Ayer and dismiss the methods and vocabulary of modem continental philosophy as nonsense. Correspondingly, with the exception offigures such as Deleuze, Lyotard, and Eco, continental thinkers seem oblivious to the Anglo-American tradition. Despite this, Wheeler argues that analytic philosophy , with its origins in the analysis ofthe limits oflanguage, logic, reference, and meaning, shares many concerns with continental thought, and that a dialogue would be mutually illuminating. He cites W.V.O. Quine's analysis of the "dogmas of empiricism," Wilfrid Sellar's famous attack on the "myth ofthe given," and Donald Davidson's rejection ofa self-interpreting language, what Wheeler terms a "magic language," as instances that strongly resonate with continental themes. In a gesture of bridge building Wheeler offers twelve essays, exploring the commensurability ofmuch in analytic philosophy with continental philosophy and especially deconstruction. (Eight ofthese essays were originally published elsewhere , though Wheeler prefaces each with a reflection on where his views have VcH. 26 (2002): 180 THE COMPAKATIST altered.) His focus is primarily, though not exclusively, on Wittgenstein, Quine, and Davidson in relation to Derrida. He also presents a pertinent discussion ofPaul de Man's theory of metaphors and indeterminacy, and another arguing that Cleanth Brooks and the New Critics share with deconstruction a similar view oflanguage, a conclusion that he draws by comparing each with Davidson. Throughout, Wheeler is careful to insist that one cannot simply translate the terms ofanalytic philosophy into those of deconstruction or the other way around. Such a notion would assume some underlying common view or shared set ofproblems, a notion contrary to both Davidson and Derrida. Rather, Wheeler argues that a comparison of different problems helps to make clear familiar modes of discussion, and that these in tum help to produce...