The Theory of Paper: Skepticism, Common Sense, Poststructuralism

Abstract

This article explores two sets of convergences: one between skeptical and commonsense philosophies in the eighteenth century, and the other between poststructuralist and eighteenth-century philosophies. It argues that all of these forms of reasoning share an interest in the paper on which they are printed. Although they use the case in point of paper quite differently, James Beattie, David Hume, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida all end up in terrain on which paper shows the connection of high theory to the common sense of material cultural studies. They all demonstrate, in other words, how paper and the ink it holds offer evidence of an irrefutable reality even as their example introduces an inevitable slipperiness to the field of example.

The “Plain Facts” of Fine Paper in “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”

“…6 Melville Maids" in order to focus attention on the "plain facts" of paper and paper making in the story, especially when, as Christina Lupton writes, "the more simply we think of ourselves returning to the page, the more assuredly we lay the grounds for new theoretical ventures by which to find, in our simplest references to paper, new proof that it was never simply there." 29 The means by which paper was "never simply there" were more apparent than ever as increased demand saw the While the first part of the story, by way of contrast, and the second part more directly, offer a vision of industrial mechanization, the vision offered needs to be balanced against the propensity of fine paper makers to be notably discriminating in their adoption of new technology. They were certainly quick to take up the paper-making machine-the "great machine, which cost us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn," which Cupid shows Melville's narrator (331) and which…”