Aestheticism and Deconstruction

The Old Aestheticism and the New

“…He examined Pater's divergence from Ruskin and suggested that Wilde's belated contribution had the effect of 'narrowing the meaning of aestheticism'. 17 But his concern was more with deconstruction than with Pater: 'Not wanting to use contemporary literary theory to elucidate Pater, I will use Pater to elucidate contemporary literary theory.' 18 What was at stake here was the suggestion that deconstruction is merely another mode of 'aestheticism', or depoliticized close reading ('Intermediate Aestheticism' as I have called it), in which the stress on indeterminacy puts texts into an ineffectual realm of pure art.…”

“…Loesberg, while attempting to do just that in 1991, used the words 'a new aestheticism' as a description of the misunderstanding of deconstruction (as a late phase of Anglo-American New Criticism) which he was attempting to refute. 25 In an enthusiastic review of Loesberg's book in diacritics (Fall 1993) Rei Terada took the phrase and consciously reversed its meaning. Just as Cubism and Impressionism had taken their names from negative reviews, so it would be appropriate now to accept a term 'from one's detractors'.…”