The Department of French and Italian, with the Departments of English and Religious Studies, &
the Program in Comparative Literature

invites you to a lecture by

Richard Terdiman
Literature and History of Consciousness
University of California, Santa Cruz

"Body and Story: Revolutionary Deconstructions in Enlightenment Fiction"

Monday, November 8 , 2004 at 4:00pm, Harbor Room,
University Center (downstairs) A reception will follow

In this talk, Professor Terdiman will discuss his most recent work and his forthcoming book, Body and Story: The Ethics and Practice of Theoretical Conflict (John Hopkins University Press, 2005). The book explores the dichotomy between two seemingly fundamentally different ways of understanding our experience of the world: as physical reality and as representation in language. In demonstrating the much more complicated relationship between them, Professor Terdiman also offers a new approach to the problem of conflicts between irreconcilable but equally compelling theoretical ideas. Conventionally, Enlightenment rationalism is understood as premised on the belief that words can meaningfully refer to things existing in the material world, while postmodernism famously argues that nothing exists outside of language. Terdiman challenges this clean distinction, finding the early seeds of postmodern doubt in the Enlightenment and demonstrating the stubborn resistance of material reality, particularly that of the body to language even today. Building on readings of works by 18th-century encyclopedist Denis Diderot and the late philosopher Jacques Derrida, Terdiman argues that despite their genuine and profound opposition, a constant negotiation or mutual interrogation has always been taking place between these two world-views, even as the balance at times shifts to one side or the other.

 For information, call the Department of French and Italian

at (805) 893-3111, or write to: lolly@french-ital.ucsb.edu