On Deconstruction

With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the often-problematic relation between his philosophical writings and the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding modern critical thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first publication of this landmark work and includes a new preface by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since the 1980s and assesses its place within cultural theory today.

Academic literary criticism continues to be dominated by 'theory' and the struggle between deconstructionist and humanist approaches to the business of reading. Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction is a typically patient, thoughtful, illuminating exposition of the ideas of Jacques Derrida and their application to literary studies., As a practicing critic, Culler has always been a deconstructor, and he approaches this topic with special immediacy and force. In On Deconstruction, he offers generous summaries of numerous representative articles and a fine annotated bibliography.... His magisterial way of tracing particular topics and techniques through our diaspora of critical texts, and his provocative analyses, cannot fail to focus any critic's thinking about deconstruction., Culler is lucid and thorough, can move into and out of other people's arguments without losing the sense of his own voice and argument, and can manage to seem equally at home with Freudianism, feminism, and traditional literary criticism., Gifted with grace and clarity, Culler provides us with a stimulating survey of contemporary literary criticism.

Jonathan Culler is Class of 1916 Professor of English at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism and The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, both from Cornell University Press, and Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.