Prefaces to the Diaphora: Rhetorics, Allegory, and the Interpretation of Postmodernity

The central concern of theseeight studies and essays is the understanding and critique of culture at theshifty boundaries between the Modem and the Postmodern epochs. The authorcontends that what needs to be addressed is the very abyss, the "spacetime" betweenthe Modern and the Postmodern worldviews, as well as the tension betweenaesthetics and ethics, critical discourse and the creative arts, in an effortto rethink multireferential processes of signification.

The keystone of the book isCarravetta's notion of Diaphoristics, a theory of interpretation as dialogue.Diaphora, or difference, refers to the ancient quarrel between poetry andphilosophy and signifies the movement between asymmetrical or heterogeneousforms of discourse that have, both historically and speculatively, borne thetransfer of meaning from one semantic/hermeneutic field to another. The authorfocuses on the necessary risk and duplicity of criticism and developsnonagonistic models based on figurationand rhetorical dynamics. In two otherchapters, the author steps back to reassess, in terms of the diaphora, thediverging notions of Postmodernity by the continental philosophers Lyotard andVattimo. The collection ends with an essay on the long-overdue conversationbetween Vico and Heidegger.