Prefaces to the Diaphora: Rhetorics, Allegory and the Interpretation of Postmodernity

The central concern of theseeight studies and essays is the understanding and critique of culture at theshifty boundaries between the Modem and the Postmodern epochs. The authorcontends that what needs to be addressed is the very abyss, the "spacetime" betweenthe Modern and the Postmodern worldviews, as well as the tension betweenaesthetics and ethics, critical discourse and the creative arts, in an effortto rethink multireferential processes of signification. The keystone of the book isCarravetta's notion of Diaphoristics, a theory of interpretation as dialogue.Diaphora, or difference, refers to the ancient quarrel between poetry andphilosophy and signifies the movement between asymmetrical or heterogeneousforms of discourse that have, both historically and speculatively, borne thetransfer of meaning from one semantic/hermeneutic field to another. The authorfocuses on the necessary risk and duplicity of criticism and developsnonagonistic models based on figurationand rhetorical dynamics. In two otherchapters, the author steps back to reassess, in terms of the diaphora, thediverging notions of Postmodernity by the continental philosophers Lyotard andVattimo. The collection ends with an essay on the long-overdue conversationbetween Vico and Heidegger.

About the Author :
Peter Carravetta is the founding editor at Queens College CUNY and also the founding editor of Differentia, review of Italian thought and author of The Elusive Hermes: Critical Method and the Philosophy of Interpretation.

Review :
". . . a remarkable example of the pluralism that characterizes the predicament of postmodern critical thinking. Carravetta's theoretical proposal to conceive of postmodern critical thinking. Carravetta's theoretical proposal to conceive of postmodern hermeneutics as a diaphoristic, that is, as a theory of the difference at work in the dialogue; his account of postmodernity as an essentially rhetorical culture; and most notably, his original treatments of D'Annunzio as an ante litteram critic of the avant-garde - all these elements make this book an original contribution to the critical and philosophical reflection on postmodernity." --Gianni Vattimo "Carravetta adds a strong and steady voice to the debate now raging over hermeneutics and postmodernism . . . In Carravetta's hands, the 'argument' resembles a dialogue, a symposium where participants are given a generous hearing and where differences advance the recovery of emergent truths. Readers are welcome to the feast." --John Paul Russo "Carravetta shows an uncommon gift for detecting hitherto overlooked interrelations among different areas of specialization, such as historiography, rhetoric, myth, and the theory of literature. . . . [His] readings, based on his original 'diaphoristic' methodology, expand the possibilities of ontological hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, discourse analysis, and rhetoric. His conclusions are never banal but daring and stimulating." --Gustavo Costa, University of California Berkeley "Of the innumerable scholars selectively working in the context of the humanities and interdisciplinary cultural studies, in a postmodern mode and on topics of the postmodern, Carravetta is by far one of the most striking ones: both in stylistic experimentation as well as in theoretical force, this book goes much beyond the ordinary postmodern representation." Annali D'Italianistica "This series of essays quite literally forges new critical paths through very rough terrain . . . revealing one of today's most stimulating and original voices. Carravetta shows himself to be both poet and critic; theorist and pedagogue; proposer and seeker of new modes of understanding, thus embodying in these pages the worth and rewards - for author and reader alike - of the very connective approach the essays argue, define, and support with critical acumen and poetic sensibility." --Rebecca West, University of Chicago