journals in 1940 and 1941, a small number of which were explicitly anti-Semitic--the reconstruction of the meaning of deconstruction is underway. Friends of de Man and enemies of deconstruction are hotly debating what connections there are, if any, between de Man's history, his politics, and his theory. Geoffrey Hartman in The New Republic defends deconstruction from the charges of historical amorality at least in the realm of theory. Hartman also offers a reading of de Man's later, theoretical writings that is rhetorically remarkable for its generosity toward his ex-colleague, its sympathy with de Man's particular historical burden. Hartman is careful not to assert but only to suggest that it may yet turn out that in the later (de Man) essays we glimpse the fragments of a great confession (30). What emerges is a new reading of de Man, the allegories turned into the confessions. Hartman sees now in his work something that was not there before because he now knows something about de Man's history. Another voice, an oppositional voice comes into the record. David Lehman in Newsweek skewers de Man and deconstruction