Why is it that one must know, and why is it that knowledge must come from prolonged study rather than direct, instantaneous experience? In his Songs of Experience, Martin Jay attempts to engage with the figures that we have already seen--Benjamin, Foucault, Barthes, Scott, Derrida, etc.--as a way of understanding precisely what that term "experience"…

Have I succeeded in making it any clearer--what is the trace, what is the aura? Well, perhaps going back, once more, to Derrida might help us to finish up. Going back to Grammatology, Derrida tells us: “the word trace must refer itself to a number of contemporary discourses whose force we intend to take into…

What do such men as Jeff and Jack mean when they speak of irony? It is possible that they mean irony in the sense of Derrida's former colleague Paul de Man. And in his glossing of the concept of irony, De Man pledges an allegiance to Schlegel and to Kierkegaard; Kierkegaard swears fealty to Socrates.…

I want, here, to return to Ankersmit's synesthetic example, the fierce redness of trumpets, because I think it is both more and less ingenious than his analysis gives it credit. The Dutch word translated as "fierce," fel, has a connotation of a sharp, acute sense. So we might then think of a painful sound which…