Proust Between Deleuze and Derrida - (Crosscurrents) by James Dutton (Paperback)

About the Book

James Dutton argues that Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27), stages a uniquely productive encounter between philosophy and literature. In its genre-defying originality, it anticipates some of the most important concepts and strategies of poststructuralist French thought exemplified in the work of Derrida and Deleuze.

Book Synopsis

James Dutton argues that Proust's lone published text, À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27), stages a uniquely productive encounter between philosophy and literature. In its genre-defying originality, it anticipates some of the most important concepts and strategies of poststructuralist French thought exemplified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze.

From the Back Cover

Explores the deep affinity between Proust's textual experimentation and the revolutionary philosophical interventions of Derrida and Deleuze James Dutton argues that Proust's lone published text, À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), stages a uniquely productive encounter between philosophy and literature. In its genre-defying originality, it anticipates some of the most important concepts and strategies of poststructuralist French thought exemplified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. While Derrida and Deleuze are often held to occupy irreconcilable philosophical positions, both philosophers are equally relevant to an understanding of Proust's philosophical significance, which fundamentally rests on his deferral of textual presence. Drawing on a range of conceptual tools from these two philosophical oeuvres, including many that are often overlooked by commentators, Dutton shows that À la recherche stages a process of uninterrupted textual becoming, in which the distinction between the concepts of 'life' and 'literature' themselves is broken down. He reads textuality as constitutively unfinished, suggesting a new confluence between all three thinkers' emphasis on life as an endlessly productive deferral. James Dutton is a casual lecturer and tutor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Review Quotes

Dutton performs an acrobatic movement between Proust, Derrida and Deleuze, foregrounding In Search of Lost Time as a 'textual becoming' and running with the 'fractal force' of all three works. Readers are invited to join Derrida and Deleuze as sprouting roots in the rhizomatic unfurling of Proust's book. We should accept.

--Patrick ffrench, King's College London

This engaging book, which might be playfully retitled 'Proust between Two Philosophers', brings critical attention back to the philosophical aspect of À la recherche du temps perdu, part of a larger trend in Proust studies that has, at least partially, moved us away from once-dominant biographical, historical, and sociological approaches.

--Patrick Bray, UCL "French Studies, Vol. XX, No. XX"

While the struggle between the literary and the philosophical remains, every encounter is a new and engaging event, and Proust's text is a fitting terrain on which to see it play out. Dutton's writing stages this encounter well, and this book will be valuable to anybody wishing to explore the nature of literature as it is read-- that is, necessarily incomplete.

--Bryan Counter, Western New England University "Symploke, Vol. 31, No. 1-2"

About the Author

James Dutton is a casual lecturer and tutor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He has published articles in Textual Practice and Angelaki.