Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism

work by de Man

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June 22, 2026

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Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism is a collection of essays by Paul de Man, a prominent literary critic and theorist. The work is a key text in the development of deconstruction, a method of literary analysis that scrutinizes the language and logic of texts to reveal inherent contradictions and question established meanings. De Man, along with Jacques Derrida, was a major proponent of deconstruction, which gained significant influence in academic disciplines during the 1970s and 1980s. The essays in Blindness and Insight explore how critical interpretations can be both illuminating and misleading, highlighting the complex and often self-undermining nature of language and meaning in literary texts.12

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Paul de Man
Life and career
…published articles; the work, titled Blindness and Insight (1971), became widely influential. Initially hired by the university as a professor of French, de Man later joined and became chairman of the department of comparative literature and was elevated to the rank of Sterling Professor of the Humanities.
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…published articles; the work, titled Blindness and Insight (1971), became widely influential. Initially hired by the university as a professor of French, de Man later joined and became chairman of the department of comparative literature and was elevated to the rank of Sterling Professor of the Humanities.
Read More