Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory (Language, Discourse, Society)

This work subjects the fundamental ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes and their followers to an examination and demonstrates the baselessness of post-Saussurean claims about the relations between language, reality and self. Front Matter....Pages i-xxiii Introduction....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Literature, Language and Reality: An Introduction....Pages 13-26 Literature as Textual Intercourse....Pages 27-48 The Illusion of Reference....Pages 49-99 Reference Restored....Pages 100-127 Front Matter....Pages 129-129 The Mirror Stage: A Critical Reflection....Pages 131-163 Walking and Differance: Towards a Reinstatement of Legocentrism....Pages 164-234 Statements, Facts and the Correspondence Theory of Truth....Pages 235-250 Back Matter....Pages 251-273 Since the end of the 1960s, literary theory has been dominated by structuralist and post-structuralist writers claiming to be drawing out the implications of the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although post-Saussurean theory has provoked a good deal of hostility, little adverse criticism has been directed at its philosophical underpinnings Raymond Tallis. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.