Mots d’Ordre: Disorder in Literary Worlds

This book links together an encyclopedic array of contemporary theoretical arguments and discourses by isolating what each of them has to say about the issue of order and disorder. It then applies that particular abstract argument to the analysis of a literary work, and this application demonstrates the utility and importance of the abstract claim and often results in unpredictable and provocative comments about the works. The issue of order and disorder generalizes the more narrow deconstructive concept of undecidability or ‘play’ and focuses the vague relations between power and resistance described by Foucault.