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Acknowledgments
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vii a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Many of the people I never met, it goes without saying, played a crucial role in the elaboration of this book. A number of colleagues and students with whom I have worked or crossed paths at lectures, conferences, and in classrooms have contributed in ways that would be difficult to circumscribe with precision. Others have helped more directly. Over the years, Dick Macksey provided regular access to the pages of MLN with easy-going yet gracious benevolence. Hillis Miller, who was the first to suggest I write a book on irony, was also among those who most recently encouraged me to publish one. Still others—Birgit Baldwin, Pat de Man, Ted Fraser, Georgia Albert, François Raffoul, Madeleine Dobie, Wayne Klein, Ora Avni, Matilda Bruckner , Jonathan Ree, Scott Carpenter, Luca Pes, Michael Syrotinski, Lawrence Kritzman, Jonathan Culler, Mark O’Connor, Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús, Vanessa Rumble, Jon Stewart, Martin McQuillan, Patsy de Man, Lindsay Waters , Werner Hamacher, Ethan Wells, Liz Rottenberg, Ann Miller, Helen Tartar—generously provided me with specific occasions to think and write a little more about irony. An abiding fascination with literature and philosophy, as distinct from any scholarly pretensions, made it nearly inevitable that I would one day encounter irony in the work of Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida . A happy coincidence permitted me to discover their writings by having them as teachers over the course of several all-too-short years. For a longer period of time now, I have benefitted from the intellectual friendship offered me by Cathy Caruth, Ellen Burt—who gave me a nudge at a key moment— and Andrzej Warminski, who has been an uninterrupted force of dialogue. At home—provided one bears in mind that “home” is more likely than not the first thing that will have been irremediably altered whenever irony makes its abode there—at home, then, I have been singularly blessed by having been viii Acknowledgments taken only slightly more seriously than my work by Hannah, Paul, Helen, and, of course, Moses and Seamus. Unless, unbeknownst to me, it was the other way around. To each and all I am infinitely indebted. As far as institutions go, I am grateful for the support I received on various occasions from both Yale University and Boston College. A special word of thanks is due to David Quigley, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Boston College , for the alacrity with which he helped to arrange a subsidy for the preparation of an index. Early versions of some chapters have appeared in print; permission to publish later versions here is gratefully acknowledged. Chapter 1 originally appeared as “L’Absolu littéraire: Friedrich Schlegel and the Myth of Irony,” MLN 107:5 (December 1992). An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “Taking Kierkegaard Apart,” diacritics 17:1 (spring 1987). Chapter 3 appeared as “Secret Agents: After Kierkegaard’s Subject,” MLN 112:5 (December 1997). An earlier version of chapter 5 was published as “Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: The Space of Translation,” Genre 16:4 (winter 1983), and the chapter is published by permission of the University of Oklahoma . Chapter 6 appeared originally as “Nietzsche, Deconstruction, and the Truth of History,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal of the New School for Social Research 15:2 (fall 1991). An earlier version of chapter 8 was published as “Practically Impossible: Jean Paulhan and Post-Romantic Irony,” parallax 9 (October–December 1998). Chapter 9 was published as “On Parole: Blanchot, Saussure, Paulhan,” Yale French Studies 106 (December 2004). An earlier version of chapter 10, titled “Deconstruction,” appeared in The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman with the assistance of Brian Reilly and with translations by Malcolm DeBevoise, copyright © 2006 Columbia University Press; the chapter is published here by permission of the Press. Chapter 11 appeared originally as “Bewildering : Paul de Man, Poetry, Politics,” MLN 124:5 (December 2009). [44.197.238.222] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:16 GMT) Without the occasion, nothing really happens, and yet the occasion has no part in what happens. — s ø r e n k i e r k e g a a r d [44.197.238.222] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:16 GMT) Gibs auf! Es war sehr früh am Morgen, die Straßen rein und leer, ich ging zum Bahnhof . Als ich eine Turmuhr mit...