Proust Between Deleuze and Derrida: The Remains of Literature (Crosscurrents)

Marcel Proust’s mythically enormous novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927), asks many demands of its reader. Its vast, intoxicating sentences, its innumerable characters, affects, and narrators, as well as its sheer length, continue to test and fascinate critics and scholars. But it precisely in this textual and imaginative expanse that Proust’s enterprise turns these demands into living concerns. This book argues that Proust reimagines the limits of phenomenal experience through deferral, focusing on his troubling of textual and conceptual presence as the always-unfinished exchange between writing and life. In its rethinking of representational and temporal commonplaces, it shows how Proust’s novel anticipates the interventions of two influential poststructuralist thinkers: Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. Whereas Derrida and Deleuze are often held to occupy irreconcilable philosophical positions, both philosophers are equally relevant to an understanding of Proust’s philosophical significance, which fundamentally rests on his deferral of textual presence. Drawing on a range of conceptual tools from these two philosophical oeuvres, including many that are often overlooked by commentators, the books argues that À la recherche stages a process of uninterrupted textual becoming, in which the distinction between the concepts of “life” and “literature” themselves is broken down. By showing how textuality is constitutively unfinished, this book suggests a new confluence between all three of its subject thinkers’ emphasis on life as deferral, and stakes a claim for rethinking the difference between thought and inscription, text and life. "James Dutton argues that Proust's lone published text, À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27), stages a uniquely productive encounter between philosophy and literature. In its genre-defying originality, it anticipates some of the most important concepts and strategies of poststructuralist French thought exemplified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze.While Derrida and Deleuze are often held to occupy irreconcilable philosophical positions, both philosophers are equally relevant to an understanding of Proust's philosophical significance, which fundamentally rests on his deferral of textual presence. Drawing on a range of conceptual tools from these two philosophers, including many that are often overlooked by commentators, Dutton shows that À la recherche stages a process of uninterrupted textual becoming, in which the distinction between the concepts of 'life' and 'literature' themselves is broken down. He reads textuality as constitutively unfinished, suggesting a new confluence between all three thinkers' emphasis on life as an endlessly productive deferral." --Publisher description Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Contents Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Text: The Difference between Philosophy and Literature 1. Voice: Tracing Restance through the Literary Abyss 2. Sense: The Hollow of Experience, the Mark[ ] of Aiôn 3. Desire: Deferring a Productive Without 4. Love: Differentiating Groups, Faciality and the Black Hole/White Wall System 5. Jealousy: Absolute Knowledge as a Dream (of) Writing 6. Grief: The Spectre and the Impossibility of Mourning (Writing) Conclusion: Sign: Ending Text Bibliography Index James Dutton argues that Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (1913 27), stages a uniquely productive encounter between philosophy and literature. In its genre-defying originality, it anticipates some of the most important concepts and strategies of poststructuralist French thought exemplified in the work of Derrida and Deleuze. The hillforts of five countries thoroughly mapped, described and explained.