The reading of theoretical texts: a critique of criticism in the social sciences

Since the structuralist debates of the 1970's the field of textual analysis has largely remained the preserve of literary theorists. Social scientists, while accepting that observation is theory laden have tended to take the meaning of texts as given and to explain differences of interpretation either in terms of ignorance or bias. In this important contribution to methodological debate, Peter Ekegren uses developments within literary criticism, philosophy and critical theory to reclaim this study for the social sciences and to illuminate the ways in which different readings of a single text...

Book Cover; Title; Contents; Acknowledgements; Epigraph; Preface; General introduction; Critiques; Excursus: 'discourse'; Notes; The social sciences and criticism; The understandings of the theories of value in Adam Smith and David Ricardo; Guilty understanding; Notes; Language and criticism; Languages; Saussure and his oppositions; Language, sign, difference and flow of meaning; Notes; The teleological mode of reading; Author and intention; The teleological mode of reading; Michael Dummett's 'exegesis'; Notes; Interpretation and the harmonious whole; The unity of the text

The fallacy of the holy whole Indeterminacy; Notes; Holes in wholes in wholes; Terminologies; Schools of thought; Language practices; The text; Meaning production; Paradigmatic leaps; Concluding remarks; Notes; Bibliography; Index