The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory by Michael P. Spikes
Darryl Hattenhauer

Michael P. Spikes. Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1997. 201 pp. $24.95.

This book fills the gap between a dictionary of theoretical terms and an introductory monograph on a particular theorist. There are short chapters on Paul de Man, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Elaine Showalter, Stephen Greenblatt, Edward W. Said, and Richard Rorty. For some, this selection might seem narrow: there is no chapter on Frederic Jameson or any other Marxist and no chapter on a psychoanalytic theorist such as Norman Holland or Nancy Chodorow. Also, some will object that Stanley Fish is more important than Rorty. Nonetheless, each chapter should prove valuable not just for advanced students but even for their mentors.
The introduction is particularly useful. It discusses the New Critics and Northrop Frye not as history we have transcended, but as lasting influences on contemporary theory. Most important, it summarizes the contributions of Fish, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Harold Bloom so that the reader can understand the chapters that follow. Some will object to the first chapter’s defense of de Man’s assertion that he is correct even though nobody can be correct. Among the important topics in the chapter on Gates are blackness as absence, Gates’s debt to whites and structuralists, and jazz improvisation as a species of Signifyin(g). The overview of Showalter’s achievement is especially good in its summary of the cultural work of the quest romance; however, by frequently treating as interchangeable the terms “gender” and “sex,” as well as the terms “feminine” and “female,” the discussion perpetuates the confusion that bothers many students. The chapter on Greenblatt is a model for showing that a text is the creation not only of an author but also of a culture. The discussion of Said shows his debt to structuralism and points out the problem when Said asserts undecid-
ability and yet also asserts that Eurocentric representations of the Orient are decidedly wrong. The next chapter is more forgiving of Rorty’s assertion that we cannot establish facts, but we can establish the fact that we cannot establish facts.
To be clear and concise about a subject that is murky and disparate is difficult, but Spikes succeeds. Moreover, he contributes new ways of looking at central concepts—for example in his explanation that Derridean deconstruction exposes opposite meanings by showing how signifieds contain their opposites. [Darryl Hattenhauer]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory by Michael P. Spikes Darryl Hattenhauer Michael P. Spikes. Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1997. 201 pp. $24.95. This book fills the gap between a dictionary of theoretical terms and an introductory monograph on a particular theorist. There are short chapters on Paul de Man, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Elaine Showalter, Stephen Greenblatt, Edward W. Said, and Richard Rorty. For some, this selection might seem narrow: there is no chapter on Frederic Jameson or any other Marxist and no chapter on a psychoanalytic theorist such as Norman Holland or Nancy Chodorow. Also, some will object that Stanley Fish is more important than Rorty. Nonetheless, each chapter should prove valuable not just for advanced students but even for their mentors. The introduction is particularly useful. It discusses the New Critics and Northrop Frye not as history we have transcended, but as lasting influences on contemporary theory. Most important, it summarizes the contributions of Fish, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Harold Bloom so that the reader can understand the chapters that follow. Some will object to the first chapter’s defense of de Man’s assertion that he is correct even though nobody can be correct. Among the important topics in the chapter on Gates are blackness as absence, Gates’s debt to whites and structuralists, and jazz improvisation as a species of Signifyin(g). The overview of Showalter’s achievement is especially good in its summary of the cultural work of the quest romance; however, by frequently treating as interchangeable the terms “gender” and “sex,” as well as the terms “feminine” and “female,” the discussion perpetuates the confusion that bothers many students. The chapter on Greenblatt is a model for showing that a text is the creation not only of an author but also of a culture. The discussion of Said shows his debt to structuralism and points out the problem when Said asserts undecid- ability and yet also asserts that Eurocentric representations of the Orient are decidedly wrong. The next chapter is more forgiving of Rorty’s assertion that we cannot establish facts, but we can establish the fact that we cannot establish facts. To be clear and concise about a subject that is murky and disparate is difficult, but Spikes succeeds. Moreover, he contributes new ways of looking at central concepts—for example in his explanation that Derridean deconstruction exposes opposite meanings by showing how signifieds contain their opposites. [Darryl Hattenhauer]

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