Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.
About Paul de Man
Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983), born Paul Adolph Michel Deman, was a Belgian-born literary critic and literary theorist. He was known particularly for his importation of German and French philosophical approaches into Anglo-American literary studies and critical theory.
More quotes from Paul de Man
Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.
literary theorist
Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.
literary theorist
The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.
literary theorist
The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.
literary theorist
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
literary theorist
The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear – and even, in certain respects, would be – the most modern of critical movements.
literary theorist
Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.
literary theorist
Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.
literary theorist
Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.
literary theorist