Renowned contributors use the late work of this crucial figure to open new speculations on "materiality." 

A "material event," in one of Paul de Man’s definitions, is a piece of writing that enters history to make something happen. This interpretation hovers over the publication of this volume, a timely reconsideration of de Man’s late work in its complex literary, critical, cultural, philosophical, political, and historical dimensions.

A distinguished group of scholars responds to the problematic of "materialism" as posed in Paul de Man’s posthumous final book, Aesthetic Ideology. These contributors, at the forefront of critical theory, productive thinking, and writing in the humanities, explore the question of "material events" to illuminate not just de Man’s work but their own. Prominent among the authors here is Jacques Derrida, whose extended essay “Typewriter Ribbon:  Limited Inc (2)” returns to a celebrated episode in Rousseau’s Confessions that was discussed by de Man in Allegories of Reading. 

The importance of de Man’s late work is related to a broad range of subjects and categories and-in Derrida’s provocative reading of de Man’s concept of "materiality"-the politico-autobiographical texts of de Man himself. This collection is essential reading for all those interested in the present state of literary and cultural theory.  

Contributors: Judith Butler, UC Berkeley; T. J. Clark, UC Berkeley; Jacques Derrida, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and UC Irvine; Barbara Johnson, Harvard U; Ernesto Laclau, U of Essex; Arkady Plotnitsky, Purdue U; Laurence A. Rickels, UC Santa Barbara; and Michael Sprinker.

Readings in Interpretation was first published in 1987. 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.

Readings in Interpretation — a volume primarily on the texts of Holderlin, Hegel, and their interpreter Heidegger—locates itself strategically between literature and philosophy. In keeping with this juxtaposition, it treats the question of self-consciousness and reflection on the levels of "theme" and "text." For both Hegel and Holderlin, selfconsciousness and its relation to knowing are explicit themes, but Waminski's readings show that a more disruptive reflection is operative on the level of text.

In an argument that centers on the textual aspects of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit,Warminski demonstrates that the negative moment—which is often interpreted as a prelude to a unified self-consciousness—cannot be accounted for by interpretive models drawn from outside the text—by concepts like the self, consciousness, or the subject. Instead, a completely different practice and theory is necessary. The author's "Prefatory Postscript" at the beginning of the book therefore serves as an introduction to sketch the theoretical basis of the readings that follow and as a "postscript" that explains the difference between "reading" and "interpretation" which those readings make necessary.