Jacques Derrida: Critical Thought by Ian Maclachlan

Abstract

MLR, IOI.3, 2oo6 8I3 of the five studies in the collection is a lengthy essay by Bernd Hasner. In line with thewidely underestimated work of Leonid Batkin on humanistic dialogue in Italy, he approaches the genre as a new episteme for the transmission of knowledge, which, as such, needs to be distinguished theoretically from competing genres between Middle Ages and Enlightenment, such as essays and treatises. This is a very dense essay that, through constant reference to the dialogues of Bruni and Tasso, but also to Plato, Shaftesbury, and Diderot, painstakingly unravels themany different pragmatic levels on which the dialogue is capable of producing 'meaning'. The study becomes par ticularly innovative where Hisner argues that critics who interpret the dialogue as an imitation of amore or less 'maieutic' co-operation between characters see only one dimension of the genre and tend to overlook a vertical dimension that pertains to the dialogue aswritten text matter, and that could enter into conflict with the first level. The author looks at different constellations of interferences between different levels of meaning, which enable him to discuss traditional subjects of dialogue theory (historical/narrative vs. mimetic/dramatic dialogue, different functions of paratext, the function of incoherence, contradictions, dissimulation, irony, game-playing) from an entirely different point of view. The interference of contexts leads Hasner to a fascinating conclusion on the importance of the dialogue genre in 'community fash ioning', as in Stephen Greenblatt's concept of self-fashioning. Whenever dialogues portray elements of exemplary social circles, they are bound to become models of a conversation praxis that in turn will influence the world outside the dialogue, in a reading experience that crosses borders. Klaus Hempfer, the editor, is the author of a second theoretical study that mainly links key concepts in sixteenth-century dialogue theory in Italy (Sigonio, Speroni, and Tasso) with Hasner's pragmatic findings. The last section of his essay seems the most useful, in that it links the fictitious pluralism of dialogues to epistemic relativism. According toHempfer, every dialogue statement is linked to the contingency of the circumstances inwhich it is uttered, and comes down to the representation of the rhetorical skills of the person speaking. Hasner contributes a second study, a stimulating view on II Cataneo overo de le conclusioni amorose, which reads Tasso's introductory section as a pragmatic contra diction: the fact that the character Tasso admits, in a dialogue, that he prefers to write down the conclusioni because the spoken word is almost too confusing, creates a pragmatic loophole that Hasner links to the one present in Plato's Phaedrus. The remaining two studies concern specific moments in the genre's history: the reception of Petrarch's Secretum in the late fourteenth century in Catalonia, and religious dialogue in late sixteenth-century France (Jean Bodin). These seem to be the least successful contributions in that their theoretical sections are slightly mechanical repetitions of Hasner's ideas. Despite some variations in quality, this is an innovative volume, with detailed bibliographic sections at the end of each article, and it deserves to be made available in either English or Italian. UNIVERSITYOF LEEDS ANNICK PATERNOSTER Jacques Derrida: Critical Thought. Ed. by IANMACLACHLAN. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2004. xii+ i66 pp. ?47.50. ISBN O-7546-o806-9. This volume is a collection of essays by divers hands, drawn from a broad spectrum of work on Derrida. It gathers together work dating between I972 (Alan Bass's relatively early piece, "'Literature"/Literature') and I998 (a piece by Robert Smith, lifted from Angelaki, and entitled 'Memento Mori'). Sandwiched between Bass and 8I4 Reviews Smith are essays that aremore or less well known and more or less celebrated, by Ann Wordsorth, Antony J. Cascardi, Ian Maclean, Jane Marie Todd, Irene E. Harvey, Timothy Clark, and Jill Robbins. When evaluating such a collection, one is prompted to ask what are the guiding principles presiding over its organization, structure, and content. The explanation advanced byMaclachlan is only half-reassuring on this count. In the preface, he tells us that 'I have adopted two simple principles: that the essays included should not previously have been collected in book form, and that they should be substantial pieces illuminating important...