Barbara Johnson
Encyclopedia
Barbara Johnson was an American literary critic and translator. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham
Professor of Law
and Psychiatry
in Society at Harvard University
. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist
and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction
, Lacan
ian psychoanalysis
, and feminist theory
—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature
. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida
accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States
at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France
. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism
.
from 1965 to 1969, and completed a Ph.D. in French at Yale University
in 1977. Her graduate studies occurred during the emergence of the "Yale School," a group of literary critics that included Johnson's thesis director, Paul de Man
. The Yale School's characteristic integration of structuralist
and poststructuralist theory
into the study of literature
became an essential feature of Johnson's approach to criticism
.
to analyses of literature
. She argues that the history
of writing (l'écriture) is an important philosophical, political, and psychoanalytical concept in twentieth-century French thought. She posits French theorist Roland Barthes
’ appropriation of Ferdinand de Saussure
’s concept of the sign
—encompassing both a "signifier
" and a "signified
"—as the foundation of his theory that language is a “structure,” a system of relations governed by a set of rules. Johnson then goes on to describe the central roles played by Derrida
and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
in destabilizing Barthes
' account of the relation between signifier and signified and the “structure” of language
. Following Derrida, Johnson argues that reading is not the task of grasping the true single meaning of a text
, but of grasping its multiple meanings, which are often unstable and contradictory. This polysemy
has allowed feminist and marginalized readers to enter texts at the locations where the author tries to "dominate, erase, or distort" the various "other" claims that are made through language and reassert their identities.
and poetry
, man and woman, literature
and theory
, guilt and innocence)” is necessarily founded upon “a repression of differences within entities” (pp. x-xi). In this book, Johnson explores how the unknown and the unknowable function in a text. The “unknown” to which she refers is not something concealed or distant, but a fundamental unknowability that constitutes and underlies our linguistic cognition.
In one of the articles in The Critical Difference, “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd
,” Johnson reads Herman Melville
’s novel as a performance of the irreconcilability between the “signifier
” and the “signified
.” She argues that if a description could perfectly describe its referent and actually “hit” its intended object (just as Billy Budd hits and kills John Claggart), the result would be the annihilation of that object. Language, thus, can only function upon imperfection, instability, and unknowability.
context of her analyses in The Critical Difference. Johnson wants to take her investigation beyond “the white male Euro-American literary, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and critical canon” that dominates the academy
as a whole and her work in particular (p. 2). But she also calls the “sameness” of that white Euro-American literary and critical tradition into question, undertaking a thorough interrogation of its boundaries. In addition, Johnson expands the scope of her literary subjects to include black and/or women writers, such as Zora Neale Hurston
, Dorothy Dinnerstein
, James Weldon Johnson
, and Adrienne Rich
. Her subsequent collection, The Feminist Difference (1998), offers a continued critique of the terms in play throughout feminism
’s history and an examination of the differences within and between feminisms.
in light of the backlash it faced over the course of the 1980s and early '90s. Through the double lenses of Paul de Man
’s posthumous Nazi collaboration
scandal and the academic community’s reaction to the murder of feminist legal theorist Mary Joe Frug
, Johnson discusses allegory
, feminism
, and the misinterpretation of deconstruction
.
as an ultimately impossible endeavor because the "mother" or original language is already, intrinsically untranslatable from signifier to signified. The more one attempts to translate a work into comprehensibility, the more likely one is to stray from its original ambiguity. Jacques Derrida
, with his thoughts on différance
, elucidates the complicating but necessary fact of language: that it is foreign to itself. Every attempt to translate sets the language against itself, creating new tensions as it progresses. Translation
, though impossible, is also necessary, as it is precisely these tensions that constitute language.
to political action and of separating linguistic contradictions, complexities, and polysemy
from political questions. In A World of Difference, she makes a turn to a “real world,” but one which is always left in quotation marks—"real," but nonetheless inseparable from its textual, written aspect. In a chapter of the book entitled, “Is Writerliness Conservative?” Johnson examines the political implications of undecidablility in writing, as well as the consequences of labeling the poetic
and the undecidable as politically inert. She writes that, if “poetry makes nothing happen,” poetry also “makes nothing happen”—the limits of the political are themselves fraught with political implications (p. 30). Harold Schweizer writes in his introduction to The Wake of Deconstruction that “[i]f interpretive closure always violates textual indeterminacy, if authority is perhaps fundamentally non-textual, reducing to identity what should remain different, Johnson’s work could best be summarized as an attempt to delay the inevitable reductionist desire for meaning” (p. 8).
Fredric Wertham
Fredric Wertham was a Jewish German-American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of violent imagery in mass media and comic books on the development of children. His best-known book was Seduction of the Innocent , which purported that comic books are...
Professor of Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
and Psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
in Society at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
, Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...
ian psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, and feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
.
Education
Barbara Johnson attended Oberlin CollegeOberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
from 1965 to 1969, and completed a Ph.D. in French at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1977. Her graduate studies occurred during the emergence of the "Yale School," a group of literary critics that included Johnson's thesis director, Paul de Man
Paul de Man
Paul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s...
. The Yale School's characteristic integration of structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
and poststructuralist theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
into the study of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
became an essential feature of Johnson's approach to criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
.
Overview of major works
In her 1990 essay, "Writing" (in Critical Terms for Literary Study), Johnson outlines the importance of theoryTheory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
to analyses of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
. She argues that the history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
of writing (l'écriture) is an important philosophical, political, and psychoanalytical concept in twentieth-century French thought. She posits French theorist Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
’ appropriation of Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
’s concept of the sign
Sign (linguistics)
There are many models of the linguistic sign . A classic model is the one by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides : the signifier , the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e...
—encompassing both a "signifier
Sign (linguistics)
There are many models of the linguistic sign . A classic model is the one by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides : the signifier , the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e...
" and a "signified
Sign (linguistics)
There are many models of the linguistic sign . A classic model is the one by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides : the signifier , the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e...
"—as the foundation of his theory that language is a “structure,” a system of relations governed by a set of rules. Johnson then goes on to describe the central roles played by Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
in destabilizing Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
' account of the relation between signifier and signified and the “structure” of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. Following Derrida, Johnson argues that reading is not the task of grasping the true single meaning of a text
Textuality
Textuality is a concept in linguistics and literary theory that refers to the attributes that distinguish the text as an object of study in those fields...
, but of grasping its multiple meanings, which are often unstable and contradictory. This polysemy
Polysemy
Polysemy is the capacity for a sign or signs to have multiple meanings , i.e., a large semantic field.Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins’ definition stipulates three elements: the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, the links between these senses form a network, and ...
has allowed feminist and marginalized readers to enter texts at the locations where the author tries to "dominate, erase, or distort" the various "other" claims that are made through language and reassert their identities.
The Critical Difference
In The Critical Difference (1980), Johnson argues that any model of difference as a polarized difference “between entities (proseProse
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, man and woman, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
, guilt and innocence)” is necessarily founded upon “a repression of differences within entities” (pp. x-xi). In this book, Johnson explores how the unknown and the unknowable function in a text. The “unknown” to which she refers is not something concealed or distant, but a fundamental unknowability that constitutes and underlies our linguistic cognition.
In one of the articles in The Critical Difference, “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd
Billy Budd
Billy Budd is a short novel by Herman Melville.Billy Budd can also refer to:*Billy Budd , a 1962 film produced, directed, and co-written by Peter Ustinov, based on Melville's novel...
,” Johnson reads Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
’s novel as a performance of the irreconcilability between the “signifier
Sign (linguistics)
There are many models of the linguistic sign . A classic model is the one by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides : the signifier , the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e...
” and the “signified
Sign (linguistics)
There are many models of the linguistic sign . A classic model is the one by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides : the signifier , the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e...
.” She argues that if a description could perfectly describe its referent and actually “hit” its intended object (just as Billy Budd hits and kills John Claggart), the result would be the annihilation of that object. Language, thus, can only function upon imperfection, instability, and unknowability.
A World of Difference and The Feminist Difference
Johnson’s next book, A World of Difference (1987), reflects a move away from the strictly canonicalCanonical
Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. Canon comes from the greek word κανών kanon, "rule" or "measuring stick" , and is used in various meanings....
context of her analyses in The Critical Difference. Johnson wants to take her investigation beyond “the white male Euro-American literary, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and critical canon” that dominates the academy
Academy
An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...
as a whole and her work in particular (p. 2). But she also calls the “sameness” of that white Euro-American literary and critical tradition into question, undertaking a thorough interrogation of its boundaries. In addition, Johnson expands the scope of her literary subjects to include black and/or women writers, such as Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, Dorothy Dinnerstein
Dorothy Dinnerstein
Dorothy Dinnerstein was an American feminist academic and activist, best known for her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur , published in the UK as The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World...
, James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...
, and Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
. Her subsequent collection, The Feminist Difference (1998), offers a continued critique of the terms in play throughout feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
’s history and an examination of the differences within and between feminisms.
The Wake of Deconstruction
The Wake of Deconstruction (1994) approaches the general state of deconstructionDeconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
in light of the backlash it faced over the course of the 1980s and early '90s. Through the double lenses of Paul de Man
Paul de Man
Paul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s...
’s posthumous Nazi collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
scandal and the academic community’s reaction to the murder of feminist legal theorist Mary Joe Frug
Mary Joe Frug
Mary Joe Frug was a professor at New England School of Law from 1981 to 1991. She is considered a forerunner of legal postmodern feminist theory, and was a renowned postmodernist and feminist legal scholar. Much of her work was collected in the posthumously-published book Postmodern Legal Feminism...
, Johnson discusses allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and the misinterpretation of deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
.
The Question of Translation
In "Taking Fidelity Philosophically" (in Difference in Translation), Johnson describes translationTranslation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
as an ultimately impossible endeavor because the "mother" or original language is already, intrinsically untranslatable from signifier to signified. The more one attempts to translate a work into comprehensibility, the more likely one is to stray from its original ambiguity. Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, with his thoughts on différance
Différance
Différance - French term coined by Jacques Derrida and homophonous with the word "différence". Différance plays on the fact that the French word différer means both "to defer" and "to differ." Derrida first uses the term différance in his 1963 paper "Cogito et histoire de la folie"...
, elucidates the complicating but necessary fact of language: that it is foreign to itself. Every attempt to translate sets the language against itself, creating new tensions as it progresses. Translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, though impossible, is also necessary, as it is precisely these tensions that constitute language.
Deconstruction, Indeterminacy, and Politics
Throughout her work, Johnson emphasizes both the difficulty of applying deconstructionDeconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
to political action and of separating linguistic contradictions, complexities, and polysemy
Polysemy
Polysemy is the capacity for a sign or signs to have multiple meanings , i.e., a large semantic field.Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins’ definition stipulates three elements: the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, the links between these senses form a network, and ...
from political questions. In A World of Difference, she makes a turn to a “real world,” but one which is always left in quotation marks—"real," but nonetheless inseparable from its textual, written aspect. In a chapter of the book entitled, “Is Writerliness Conservative?” Johnson examines the political implications of undecidablility in writing, as well as the consequences of labeling the poetic
Poetic
Poetic may refer to:* Poetry, or a relation thereof.* Too Poetic, a deceased rapper and hip hop producer....
and the undecidable as politically inert. She writes that, if “poetry makes nothing happen,” poetry also “makes nothing happen”—the limits of the political are themselves fraught with political implications (p. 30). Harold Schweizer writes in his introduction to The Wake of Deconstruction that “[i]f interpretive closure always violates textual indeterminacy, if authority is perhaps fundamentally non-textual, reducing to identity what should remain different, Johnson’s work could best be summarized as an attempt to delay the inevitable reductionist desire for meaning” (p. 8).
Selected works and suggestions for further reading
- MosesMosesMoses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
and MulticulturalismMulticulturalismMulticulturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) - Persons and Things (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008)
- Mother Tongues: Sexuality, Trials, Motherhood, Translation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
- "Using People: KantKANTKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
with Winnicott," in The Turn to Ethics, ed. Marjorie GarberMarjorie GarberMarjorie B. Garber is a professor at Harvard University and the author of a wide variety of books, most notably ones about William Shakespeare and aspects of popular culture including sexuality....
, Beatrice Hanssen, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz (New York: Routledge, 2000) - "AnthropomorphismAnthropomorphismAnthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
in Lyric and Law," in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, 10 Yale J.L. & Human. 549 (Summer 1998) - "MosesMosesMoses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
and IntertextualityIntertextualityIntertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
: Sigmund FreudSigmund FreudSigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Zora Neale HurstonZora Neale HurstonZora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, and the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
," in Poetics of the Americas, ed. Bainard Cowan and Jefferson Humphries (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997) - The Feminist Difference: Literature, PsychoanalysisPsychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, Race and Gender (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998) - The Wake of Deconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)
- "Writing," in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank LentricchiaFrank LentricchiaFrank Lentricchia is an American literary critic, novelist, and film teacher. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University in 1966 and 1963 respectively after receiving a B.A. from Utica College in 1962...
and Thomas McLaughlinThomas McLaughlinThomas McLaughlin was an Irish nationalist politician.Born in Armagh, he became politically active and rose to become the chair of Armagh Urban Council and a member of Armagh County Council. He also served as Supreme Knight of the Knights of Saint Columbanus. In 1928, he was the founding...
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) - A World of Difference (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987)
- "Taking Fidelity Philosophically," in Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph F. Graham (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)
- The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary RhetoricRhetoricRhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) - Défigurations du langage poétique: La seconde révolution baudelairienne (Paris: Flammarion, 1979)
Edited volumes and projects
- The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Principal ed., Vincent B. Leitch, with William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams (New York: Norton, 2001)
- Freedom and Interpretation: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 1992 (New York: Basic Books, 1993)
- Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987-1988, ed. with Jonathan AracJonathan AracJonathan Arac is an American literary scholar. He is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at University of Pittsburgh, visiting professor at Columbia University and Director of Pitt's Humanities Center...
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) - A New History of French Literature, Principal ed., Dennis Hollier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
- Yale French Studies, No. 63, "The Pedalogical Imperative: Teaching as a Literary Genre" (1982)
Translations
- Stéphane MallarméStéphane MallarméStéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, Divagations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) - Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, DisseminationDisseminationTo disseminate , in terms of the field of communication, means to broadcast a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience. Dissemination takes on the theory of the traditional view of communication, which involves a sender and receiver...
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) - Philippe SollersPhilippe SollersPhilippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel , published by Seuil, which ran until 1982...
, "Freud's Hand," in Yale French Studies, No. 55-56 (1979) - Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, "Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok," in the Georgia Review, No. 31 (1977)
External links
- Barbara Johnson remembered at the Harvard University Press Blog.
- Literary luminary passes away The Harvard Crimson.
See also
- List of deconstructionists