Mastering discourse : the politics of intellectual culture / Paul A. Bové.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The penitentiary of reflection : Søren Kierkegaard and critical activity -- Variations on authority : some deconstructive transformations of the new criticism -- The metaphysics of textuality : Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Nietzsche's Use and abuse of history -- The ineluctability of difference : scientific pluralism and the critical intelligence -- Agriculture and academe : America's southern question -- The rationality of disciplines : the abstract understanding of Stephen Toulmin -- Reclaiming criticism : willful love in the tradition of Henry Adams -- Paul de Man : critic against consensus -- Dante, Gramsci, and cultural criticism -- Madness, medicine, and the state.