Reading and Responsibility

Following a substantial introduction in which Derek Attridge discusses the relationship among deconstruction, literature, and ethics, this book pinpoints the importance of Jacques Derrida's work for literature and related areas and identifies the important literary theorists with whom he was associated (Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller). A conversation with the theoriest Jean-Michel Rabat? is followed by a final chapter on J. M. Coetzee. Illustrating the continuing vitality of deconstructive thinking in aesthetic analysis, this volume examines the role of ethics in literature, not for the purposes of moral instruction but for the fostering of responsibility through the act of reading.