FIKTION BEI PAUL DE MAN
FICTION IN PAUL DE MAN

Summary/Abstract: Fiction in Paul de Man. Literature as a modern institution is founded—as, considering the relationship between testamentality and fictionality, Jacques Derrida pointed out in his essay Demeure and pertinent texts—on the one hand on the neutralization of the undecidability that haunts the demarcation line between literature and its “other,” and on the further fiction of comme si on the other. Aiming to inquire into the far side of this institutionally fortified “other fiction,” the present contribution attempts to give an account of Paul de Man's concept of fiction that is based on the non-phenomenal effects of a machine-like textuality. This concept appears—even if in a rather dispersed way—again and again in central contexts of the Rousseau part of Allegories of Reading, but has received surprisingly little attention in the literature on de Man. The focus of this article lies on the close reading of a longer passage from the final chapter of the mentioned work.

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