J. Hillis Miller, 92, Dies; Helped Revolutionize Literary Studies
He was most closely associated with the Yale School, which took on the foundations of literary scholarship in the 1970s and ’80s.
The literary critic J. Hillis Miller in 2009. He was not only deconstruction’s great explicator; he was also its great defender.Credit.Jeremy Maryott
Feb. 13, 2021
J. Hillis Miller, a literary critic who, by applying the wickedly difficult analytic method known as deconstruction to a broad range of British and American prose and poetry, helped revolutionize the study of literature, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Sedgwick, Me. He was 92.
Reading for the Plot, because he describes how the plot in which literature and the MLA revolved was ready to explode the way the stories in Lodge’s and Eco’s novels do. The plot had tightened up and was ready to spring boy-yoy-yoing! The professors were building a movement right there on Sixth Avenue at the Hilton hotel, a new Tower of Babel, out of the plethora of interesting books, ideas, events they were churning out. And these novels convey how tightly wound up this moment felt. The MLA stood at its beating heart and provided the arena in which the contest to define what the humanities were would be fought. Or so we believed. “The whole academic world seemed on the move,” wrote Lodge. It was on the move and also in the process of being monetized: “The American Express card has come to replace the library pass.”
Philosophy Beside Itself was first published in 1986. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida have been the single most powerful influence on critical theory and practice in the United States over the past decade. But with few exceptions American philosophers have taken little or no interest in Derrida s work, and the task of reception, translation, and commentary has been left to literary critics. As a result, Derrida has appeared as a figure already defined by essentially literary critical activities and interests.