Reconstructing Literary Value

Abstract

In contemplating the damage to the once pleasant academic groves wreaked by such cheerful woodsmen, traditional humanists may be forgiven if they have found themselves listening with some anticipation for the first sounds of cracking timber. The dominance of the views of deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man has produced something like a state of cold war in many university departments as the deconstructionists have sought to consolidate their position. Throughout the late 1970s and early and mid-1980s the conflict clearly favored the deconstructionists, as graduate theses, faculty search committees, and professional journals became increasingly preoccupied with the new views. But the bough on which Jonathan Culler' and his colleagues have been sitting began to creak loudly when in 1987 it became widely known that Paul de Man had collaborated with the Nazis and had written anti-Semitic and