DeMan’s turn from history to reading mirrors a generational retreat from diachronic narrative

Evidence

For one thing, few contemporaries have lived the crisis in history, the crisis in historiography, the crisis in the narrative language of the diachronic, so intensely as DeMan: the possibility of returning afresh to this extreme experience — however he himself decided to handle it theoretically — is then one of the sources of the value and significance of his reflection on it for us. “I began to read Rousseau seriously,” he tells us, “in preparation for a historical reflection on Romanticism and found myself unable to progress beyond local difficulties of interpretation. In trying to cope with this, I had to shift from historical definition to the problematics of reading. This shift, which is typical of my generation, is of more interest in its results than in its causes.” — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 490

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the ‘shift from historical definition to problematics of reading’ as the defining intellectual gesture of DeMan’s generation.
• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader argument about postmodernism’s loss of historicity and depth models. — connects to: DeMan’s rhetorical promise unifies speech acts with allegory to generate history — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 538; The historical novel reveals contradictions of content becoming contradictions of form — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 695; Postmodern pastiche blurs the present into a timeless simulacral past — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 86 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: DeMan’s rhetorical promise unifies speech acts with allegory to generate history — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 538; The historical novel reveals contradictions of content becoming contradictions of form — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 695; Postmodern pastiche blurs the present into a timeless simulacral past — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 86 (+1 more)