Institution and Interpretation

by Weber, Samuel

• ISBN13: 9780804731195
• ISBN10: 0804731195
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Institution and Interpretationinvestigates the forces that shape and limit interpretive practices. Whereas the prevailing use of the terminstitutionstends to reduce their role to that of maintaining the status quo, Weber suggests that institutions are never entirely free of the need to consolidate their authority through an ambivalent process of reinstituting themselves, a process in which interpretation plays a crucial role. Interpretation thus emerges not only as an activity made possible by institutions but as an essential component of their operation. To the book's original nine essays--addressing such topics as professionalism in criticism, the relation between psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, and the contemporary situation of the humanities--this new edition adds six essays, one of them previously unpublished. Topics discussed include the future of the university and of the humanities, Kierkegaard's notion of "repetition," Josiah Royce's conception of a "community" of interpretation, and the problematic place of reading in reader-response theory. Reviews of the First Edition "One of the primary proposals of Samuel Weber's important new book is that we must look at what institutions exclude and delimit as well as what they include and enable." --Critical Texts "A text of major importance and remarkable originality. For the first time, the antecedents and the complexities of the question are clearly defined and understood." --Paul de Man, 1983 "Institution and Interpretationrecommends itself here for its rigorous appraisal of the process through which oppositions come to be instituted. . . . It provokes a rethinking of gender in all of its ‘contingent essentiality.'" --Genders

Author Biography

Samuel Weber is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Paris Program in Critical Theory. Among his many books are The Legend of Freud: Expanded Edition (Stanford, 2000) and Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford, 1996).

Table of Contents

Note on Previous Publication	vii
Introduction	ix
Closure and Exclusion	3	(15)
The Limits of Professionalism	18	(15)
The Debt of Criticism: Notes on Stanley Fish's Is There a Text in This Class?	33	(7)
Capitalizing History: The Political Unconscious	40	(19)
The Critics' Choice	59	(14)
The Blindness of the Seeing Eye: Psychoanalysis, Hermeneutics, Entstellung	73	(12)
Reading and Writing---chez Derrida	85	(17)
The Debts of Deconstruction and Other, Related Assumptions	102	(30)
Ambivalence: The Humanities and the Study of Literature	132	(21)
How Not to Stop Worrying	153	(8)
Saussure and the Apparition of Language: The Critical Perspective	161	(19)
Caught in the Act of Reading	180	(27)
The Vaulted Eye: Remarks on Knowledge and Professionalism	207	(13)
The Future of the University: The Cutting Edge	220	(16)
The Future of the Humanities: Experimenting	236	(19)
Notes	255	(16)
Index	271