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As contemporary thinkers continue to explore the intellectual
affinities that bind the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, their
attention has turned with increasing frequency to Diderot. Focusing
on models of communication, this book draws on an interdisciplinary
configuration - a conjunction of communication theory, philosophy
of science, and literary theory - to analyze texts from Diderot's
own interdisciplinary corpus.
Of particular pertinence to the author's argument is Michel
Serres's model of dialogue. Rejecting the traditional notion of
dialogue as a binary exchange, Serres defines it instead as the
product of the association of two interlocutors, who join forces
against a third term - another interlocutor or background noise -
that threatens to disrupt the exchange. Serres thus substitutes a
ternary model of dialogue for the conventional binary one.
Using Serres's model as a point of departure, the author not only
identifies specific instances of Diderot's use of a ternary
communicational model but, more important, also demonstrates how
Diderot's writings themselves generate a ternary model of
communication that is uniquely his.
She does this by tracing the model through texts drawn from domains
as diverse as fiction, history, and natural philosophy. The
repeated recurrence of Diderot's ternary model in these different
contexts brings into focus an unexpected unity in what at first
looks like a disparate corpus. As the analysis proceeds,
furthermore, it also becomes clear that Diderot's materialist
philosophy dictates a rhetoric aiming at the sensitive body just as
much as the reasoning mind.
Though the astounding diversity of Diderot's writings - as
encyclopedist, novelist, playwright, philosopher, scientific
theorist, and art critic - has most often led critics to avoid the
question of what coherences there might be within that diversity,
in this book the author asks just that question - and goes far
toward providing a convincing, satisfying, and stimulating answer.
The book includes a new translation of the "Preface-annexe" of "La
Religieuse," the integral part of Diderot's novel missing from most
readily available English-language editions.
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