ABSTRACT
In recent years a number of new approaches to the reading of literary and philosophical texts has emerged. This emergence, while it has its origin in French and German thought, has come if not to dominate then at least to exert a profound influence on AngloAmerican philosophical and literary studies. If the use of the ‘post’ to indicate such a departure has any function at all then what it marks is a textual practice which takes place in the wake of a critique of (amongst other things) humanism, intentionality and historical reductionism. A number of proper names have come to play a major role in these recent adventures. In the case of German thought these names are Heidegger and Gadamer. The impact of French thought offers us no one proper name as such. There is rather a persuasive influence that comes, for example, from Lacan, and hence the inclusion of psychoanalysis within textual studies; there is also the influence of Derrida and of a number of other and perhaps less well known philosophers and literary critics. The importance of French thought is that it has provided a domain of experimentation. In the wake of the critique of the certainties that have dominated the reading of texts which were for the most part based in the concept of the subject, there is now a freedom in which the rules of evaluation and assessment are in the process of being negotiated.
