Review by Choice Review
The point of Tavor Bannet's title is that the writing of Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan is informed by a "logic of dissent" from "structuralism--" used here as an ideological rather than a methodological label. Each of these writers in his own way--so goes the thesis of the book--resists the emphasis upon system, law, and constraint, which governs the technocratic, neocapitalist structures of postwar France. This is not an unprecedented view of these writers; Tavor Bannet imposes it, however, in a more sweeping way than have other students of the history of structuralism and poststructuralism. She treats even such "high-structuralist" projects as Barthes's Myth Today and his analysis of the narrative of Jacob's struggle with the angel (his Systeme de la mode is not mentioned, however) as subversions of structuralism. But even if this thesis is pressed too rigorously, it is good to be reminded that current critical orthodoxies were originally proposed as "structures of dissent" from orthodoxies within a particular historical context, and proposed too in a spirit of playfulness. Bannet mounts her argument clearly and patiently. Still, the specialized field of this book will limit its use to graduate students and only the most sophisticated undergraduate readers. G. R. Wasserman Russell Sage College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
