ABSTRACT
Roger Poole shares with the figures an acute sensitivity to the "how" of Soren Kierkegaard's rhetoric and a preference for ambiguity and polysemy over univocal meaning. In this widely read 1993 book, British literary theorist Poole analyzes a variety of Kierkegaardian texts through the lens of postmodern theory. His interlocutors are the classic voices of the genre: Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, and, most centrally, Jacques Derrida. Contrary to habitual "postmodern" readings of Kierkegaard, which frequently present him as abandoning indirect communication after 1846, Poole devotes substantial attention to Kierkegaard's "second authorship," especially his Communion Discourses and Practice in Christianity. Poole argues that far from abandoning indirect communication in these texts, Kierkegaard undertakes even more potent and creative forms of it. Poole highlights their reactions of befuddlement, amazement, and frustration—interpreting these responses as evidence that Kierkegaard's commitment to indirect communication was in force to the very end.
