Temporality and Trope: A Theoretical Precursion toward the Question of Allusion as Metaphor

248 Pages·2017·1.4 MB·English

by  Donald Nicholas Shultz

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Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
5-2016
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Donald Nicholas Shultz
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [e-mail]
Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss
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Shultz, Donald Nicholas, "Temporality and Trope: A Theoretical Precursion toward the Question of Allusion
as Metaphor. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3664
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee
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To the Graduate Council:
I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Donald Nicholas Shultz entitled "Temporality
and Trope: A Theoretical Precursion toward the Question of Allusion as Metaphor." I have
examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend
that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy, with a major in English.
Thomas F. Haddox, Major Professor
We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance:
Allen Dunn, Ben Lee, Richard Aquila
Accepted for the Council:
Carolyn R. Hodges
Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
(Original signatures are on file with official student records.)
Temporality and Trope:
A Theoretical Precursion toward the Question of Allusion as Metaphor

A Dissertation Presented for the
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Donald Nicholas Shultz
May 2016
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The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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For those I love,
alive and dead.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for those who have helped me. At
the age of fifteen, the late Erma Konitsky introduced me to Frost, Dickinson, and Thoreau,
having chosen to use her Ph.D. to teach high school English in her hometown. At sixteen, Mark
Previte, who would earn an EdD while teaching high school, introduced me to the study of
formal philosophy with a selection from The Republic. As an undergraduate, I benefited from
the efforts of Judith Haqan Villa, the generosity of Maurice-Kilwein Guevara, and the joie de
vivre of T. Kenneth Wilson. While earning an MFA, I gravitated toward literature courses
because of the teaching of Paul Bové, Marcia Landy, and Philip E. Smith.
I extend my thanks to Richard Aquila for his willingness to continue as a member of my
committee after becoming Professor Emeritus, without ever having mentioned his change in
status; to Ben Lee, for his continued and genial involvement after my initial focus on poetry
vanished; to Allen Dunn for his questions, and, especially, on two separate occasions, his
suggestion of works that led me on a path radically different from that proposed in the
prospectus; and to Tom Haddox for his good sense, for his essential questions that helped me to
frame the project, and for his beneficent patience expressed in many forms.
I thank my brother Luke, who demonstrates refusal in its best expression. For various
types of support, I thank my wife's parents, John and Sumiko Heald; and my parents, Donald R.
and Valerie Shultz.
I gladly bear an immense debt to you, Cynthia, and have for seventeen years.
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And, most of all, I owe the existence of this dissertation to the joys, Ingrid and
Margheretta.
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ABSTRACT

If we begin with Fredric Jameson's summation that High Modernism concerns itself with
temporality, while postmodernism concerns itself with space, how do we trace the exchange of
the object of concern? Moreover, did philosophical preoccupations precipitate this supplantation
of questions of time by those of space? To attempt to answer this question, we examine two
distinct areas of critical theory, cultural theory and deconstruction, as presented within the
oeuvres of Jameson and Jacques Derrida, respectively. The question of temporality leads herein
to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and a critique of the variations on Heidegger's
conceptualizations of temporality created by Jameson and Derrida, and the role of those
variations within the broader pursuit of critical theory. Ultimately, this dissertation functions as
preparation for an examination of the moment at which, we preliminarily posit, the focus of
literary studies transfers from time to space: Late Modernism. While Jameson does not forward
this argument, we rely on his nomenclature and distinction.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Elevation of Spatiality over Temporality
in Fredric Jameson's Map of Time 5
A. The Territory 5
B. Uneven Development, by Quadrants, by the Whole Map 18
C. "Nihil est sine ratio." 28
D. Die Rückerklärungen 35
E. Endless Temporal War without Death 43

Chapter 2: Deconstruction, Différance, Death: Jacques Derrida’s Dependence
on Dia-Synchrony to Form the Center of His Theory 48
A. Beyond Nothing: Différance and Its Temporality 48
B. A Metaphysician Standing on His Head Is Yet a Metaphysician 55
C. Before Nothing 70
D. The Center Holds 79
E. Cutting the Derridean Knot 89

Chapter 3: The Third Time, or, the Remembrance, and Subsequent
Consideration, of the Possibility of the Function
of Heideggerean Ecstatic Temporality 99
A. The Ghost of Wyndham Lewis 99
B. Is There a There There? 108
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C. Not Species/Genus 120
D. The Death of Deathless Being 138
E. The Moving Finger of Stream of Consciousness Critical Theory 148

Chapter 4: The Use of Specific Tropes to Represent and Supplement Varying
Conceptualizations of Temporality, and the Relation
of Those Tropes to the Copula 166

A. A Core of Time: "A hierarchy which can be attained, I think" 166
B. The Impossible Copula and the Impossible I 181
C. Is Is 197
D. The Problem of One Temporality for All Time 210

Epilogue: A Simple Extended Metaphor for the Interplay
of Synchrony, Diachrony, and Ecstatic Temporality 220

Works Cited 226

Vita 238