Stanley Cavell's work is distinctive not only in its importance to
philosophy but also for its remarkable interdisciplinary range. Cavell
is read avidly by students of film, photography, painting, and music,
but especially by students of literature, for whom Cavell offers major
readings of Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare, and others. In this first
book-length study of Cavell's writings, Michael Fischer examines
Cavell's relevance to the controversies surrounding poststructuralist
literary theory, particularly works by Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis
Miller, Paul de Man, and Stanley Fish.
Throughout his study, Fischer focuses on skepticism, a central concern
of Cavell's multifaceted work. Cavell, following J. L. Austin and
Wittgenstein, does not refute the radical epistemological questioning of
Descartes, Hume, and others, but rather characterizes skepticism as a
significant human possibility or temptation. As presented by Fischer,
Cavell's accounts of both external-world and other-minds skepticism
share significant affinities with deconstruction, a connection
overlooked by contemporary literary theorists.
Fischer follows Cavell's lead in examining how different genres address
the problems raised by skepticism and goes on to show how Cavell draws
on American and English romanticism in fashioning a response to it. He
concludes by analyzing Cavell's remarks about current critical theory,
focusing on Cavell's uneasiness with some of the conclusions reached by
its practitioners. Fischer shows that Cavell's insights, grounded in
powerful analyses of Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, permit a fresh
view of Derrida, Miller, de Man, and Fish. The result is not only a
revealing characterization of deconstruction but a much-needed and
insightful introduction to Cavell's rich but difficult oeuvre.
