In occupied Belgium during World War II, Paul de Man (1919-1983) wrote music, lecture, and exhibition reviews, a regular book column, interviews, and articles on cultural politics for the Brussels daily newspaper "Le Soir," From December 1940 until he resigned in November 1942, de Man contributed almost 200 articles to this and another newspaper, both then controlled by Nazi sympathizers and vocal advocates of the "new order."
Later to become one of the most respected and influential literary theorists in America, de Man, then 21 and 22 years old, wrote primarily as the chief literary critic for "Le Soir," His weekly column reviewed the latest novels and poetry from Belgium, France, Germany, and England. De Man commented extensively on major propaganda expositions, and interviewed leading writers and cultural figures, including Paul Valery and the future Vichy Education minister Abel Bonnard.

The political extremes of de Man's wartime writing are marked by two articles. His single anti-Semitic article, "Les Juifs dans la litterature actuelle" (4 March 1941), acquiesces in the deportation of Jews to "a Jewish colony isolated from Europe." But de Man later argued in defense of a Resistance-linked journal ("A propos de la revue "Messages, "" 14 July 1942) against the "totalitarian" censors' "unconsidered attacks."

This volume reprints in facsimile all of de Man's articles in "Le Soir" as well as three articles he wrote prior to the occupation in 1940 as editor of the liberal "Cahiers du Libre Examen." It also includes English translations of the ten articles written in Flemmish for the Antwerp paper "Het Vlaamsche Land," in March-October 1942. The collection appears underthe auspices of the "Oxford Literary Review," England's leading theoretical journal for over a decade.

This collection of essays serves as a forum for a broad spectrum of responses to the war-time writing of Paul de Man, responses rarely in agreement and often sharply contradictory, differing in approach, affect, and style. "Responses" engages in reading de Man's early articles, in articulating their multiple contexts, then and now, and in opening the limitations imposed by rubrics like "the case of Paul de Man" and "deconstruction politics."
"Responses" brings together the readings and commentaries of literary critics and historians from the United States and Europe, with their diverse strategies-historical, rhetorical, psychological, political. The primary aims of these essays are reading de Man's texts, from 1940 to 1983, and assessing them in their political, ideological, and institutional fields.

"Responses" also provides essential historical materials-letters, documents, personal recollections-on "Le Soir" and "Het Vlaamsche Land," on the occupation of Belgium, and on the biography of Paul de Man. An appendix collects the recent reactions of newspapers in the United States and Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, and elsewhere) to the discovery of de Man's wartime writings.

Contributors include Yves Bonnefoy, Cynthia Chase, Else de Bens, Ortwin de Graef, Jacques Derrida, Rodolphe Gasche, Gerald Graff, Barbara Johnson, Jeffrey Mehlman, J. Hillis Miller, Edward Said, Marc Shell, Gayatri Spivak, and others.

The collection appears under the auspices of the "Oxford Literary Review," England's leading theoretical journal for over a decade.