Fionola Meredith 
Experiencing the Postmetaphysical Self 
Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

This book charts and challenges the bruising impact of post-Saussurean thought on the categories of experience and self-presence. It attempts a reappropriation of the category of lived experience in dialogue with poststructuralist thinking. Following the insight that mediated subjectivity need not mean alienated selfhood, Meredith forwards a postmetaphysical model of the experiential based on the interpenetration of poststructuralist thinking and hermeneutic phenomenology. Since poststructuralist approaches in feminist theory have often placed women’s lived experiences ‘under erasure’, Meredith uses this hermeneutic/deconstructive model to attempt a rehabilitation of the singular ‘flesh and blood’ female existent.

Table of Content

Introduction: Difference Unleashed Difference and Undecidability: Post-Saussurean Thought Woman as Text: the Influence of Poststructuralism on Feminism The Poststructuralist Erasure of Experience Postmetaphysical Frameworks for Experience ‘It’s Me Here’: Writing the Singular Self, Writing the Post-deconstructive Female Self Conclusion: Rapprochement Index

About the author

Having received her Ph D in 2001 from Queen’s University Belfast, FIONOLA MEREDITH works as a freelance writer for
The Irish Times and Fortnight, Northern Ireland’s journal of politics, arts and culture, where she sits on the editorial board. She is also a broadcaster and critic, contributing regularly to BBC Northern Ireland programmes.