TY - JOUR
AB - This volume comprises ten essays that reflect on the question of how the modern subject attempts to go beyond the so-called ‘death of the subject’ that was announced by post-structuralism. The essays avoid any temptation of a return to essentialism by emphasizing the functional qualities of the subject: in spite all the criticisms and reservations, the subject remains a notion that works. Following an Introduction in which Claudia Brodsky briefly presents the complementary approaches brought together in the volume, the book is divided into three parts related to three crucial categories: subjects, causalities and judgement. The first section reviews certain concepts that have traditionally been associated with subjective identity: Marshall Brown demonstrates the affective dimension of Descartes’ ‘cogito’ through an analysis of literary works by Rousseau, Wordsworth, Goethe and Kleist; Eduardo Lerro describes the replacement of the early modern understandings of ‘inwardness’ by the modern notion of ‘interiority’ as a space into which externality is projected; and Eloy LaBrada recovers Marie de Gournay’s philosophy of sexual distinction as a sceptical antidote to canonical humanism. The second section explores the dynamics related to subject and object that are the foundation of conventional definitions of causality: David Ferris focuses on Diderot’s critique of Fragonard, while John Park considers Richardson and Flaubert’s distinctive manners of dealing with narrative time in Clarissa and Un Cœur simple respectively. In the same section, Karen Feldman examines contemporary perspectives on Aristotle’s Poetics, departing from Lessing’s specific take on catharsis, and Irina Simova investigates the role of time in the construction process of the subject in Kant, Hegel and Marx. In the third part, acknowledging the exercise of distance that judgement implies, Paul Keller deals with Adam Smith’s approach to sympathy, and Vivasvan Soni studies the component of inevitability in Fielding’s view of judgement. Lastly, Claudia Brodsky revises Kant’s idea of ‘common sense’. This collection represents a substantial contribution to contemporary thought on subjectivity, and is one which combines speculative discourse with insightful readings of specific works, thus ensuring the necessary attention to the topic’s historical development. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Inventing Agency: Essays on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject. Eds. Claudia Brodsky and Eloy LaBrada
JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies
DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqy054
DA - 2018-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/inventing-agency-essays-on-the-literary-and-philosophical-production-2sIPMtANow
SP - 508
VL - 54
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -