The Figure of the Road: Deconstructive Studies in Humanities Disciplines

The Figure of the Road examines the metaphor of the road, way, or path in works of representative humanities disciplines (literature, religion, philosophy, visual art, popular culture) to show how writers and artists anticipated the dilemma known to contemporary deconstruction as the «aporia» or «pathless place.» This tradition exposes the solution advocated in Derrida’s late thought – the search for the «tout autre» – as a negative theology and suppression of writing’s freedom to allegorize these insoluble problems. The Figure of the Road concludes by tracing the bleak, Beckett-like implications of this freedom for curriculum and ethics in a world understood as wholly figural.