Movement and Metaphor: Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida on Philosophy and Literature

Dissertation, University of New South Wales (Australia) (1998)
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Abstract

The thesis concerns the relation between philosophy and literature as it is revealed in the writing of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida on metaphor. Its central claim has emerged from the contrast in the writing strategies of these philosophers. The opening sections explore the consistencies to be observed between the accounts of language apparent in their analyses of metaphor, and their views on the relation between the philosophical and literary discourses. Beliefs about the operations of language underlie their attitudes to metaphor and they use metaphor to support their positions on the distinction between philosophy and literature as genres. ;The thesis uses Ricoeur's account of metaphor to illuminate the very difficult form of Derrida's writing. This may appear paradoxical, for metaphor as it is currently understood, seems difficult for Derrida to reconcile with his account of the disruption to intended meaning, caused by the play of discursive forces. But the thesis shows that the seeming paradox is in fact a key to a reading of Derrida that gives a new insight into his relation with Ricoeur, and into his new form of philosophico-literary writing. The main assertion of the thesis, then, is that Derrida's writing practice enacts in its structure and function the theory of metaphor as articulated by Ricoeur. Genevieve Lloyd's idea of "enactment" in Being in Time , is adapted in order to make this connection and to relate it to the philosophy literature debate. ;Derrida's work highlights the problems we face when we try to ground the distinction between philosophy and literature in the understanding of metaphor. Yet at the same time, Derrida's text draws literature and philosophy into a tensional relation that exhibits the similarities and differences between them. Retaining and transforming both, it creates a new discursive space---one that defies any genre distinction. ;Finally, the thesis too, is constructed as an "enactment" of Ricoeur's tensional theory of metaphor. It holds certain aspects of Ricoeur's and Derrida's work in a structure that both maintains and breaks down the opposition between them. At the same time it permits us to see in Derrida's work the creation of a new discursive space beyond the tension between philosophy and literature

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