Language and rhetoric in Paul de Man: Irony as resistance to reading

Abstract

This text tries to systematize the concept of «resistance to theory» that Paul de Man develops in his essay “The resistance to theory” (1982), in order to identify its theorical assumptions and explain them regarding the essay named “The concept of irony”. So, we intend to reconsider the concept of «resistance to theory» taking into account the concept of «reading» used in it. In order to do this, we will go through some of the latest essays where Miguel Dalmaroni has thought Paul de Man ´s theory (as well as the work of Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes) in relationship with the Argentine and Latin-American literary criticism.

Keywords

• resistencia
• teoría literaria
• ironía
• lectura.