Resumen de Contemplation and Criticism: Coleridge, Derrida and the Sublime
Recent criticism has often contrasted both deconstruction and Romantic idealism with diverse ‘progressive’ ideologies, whether historical-materialist in origin, or associated with the economic liberalism of British Whigs in the early nineteenth century. At the same time, however, Romantic idealism is often seen as involving a Platonic essentialism which distinguishes it from deconstruction as much as from historical materialism. My essay seeks to unravel these dichotomies and paradoxes, highlighting the political ambiguity of the advocates of Romantic-era political economy, as well as the anti-essentialist aspects of Coleridge's idealism, and the important elements it has in common with Derrida's questioning of ‘self-presence’ and logocentrism. The principal form of the sublime that I explore arises from Coleridge's and Derrida's recognition of the indefinableness of the origin of consciousness or the source of meaning in language – a recognition which, I argue, is progressive in its resistance to reductive and instrumentalizing definitions of humanity.
