French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Johnson, Persons and Things
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Barbara JOHNSON, Persons and Things

Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008, 272 p.
EAN : 9780674026384

ABSTRACT

Moving effortlessly between symbolist poetry and Barbie dolls, artificial intelligence and Kleist, Kant, and Winnicott, Barbara Johnson not only clarifies psychological and social dynamics; she also re-dramatizes the work of important tropes—without ever losing sight of the ethical imperative with which she begins: the need to treat persons as persons.

In Persons and Things, Johnson turns deconstruction around to make a fundamental contribution to the new aesthetics. She begins with the most elementary thing we know: deconstruction calls attention to gaps and reveals that their claims upon us are fraudulent. Johnson revolutionizes the method by showing that the inanimate thing exposed as a delusion is central to fantasy life, that fantasy life, however deluded, should be taken seriously, and that although a work of art “is formed around something missing,” this “void is its vanishing point, not its essence.” She shows deftly and delicately that the void inside Keats's urn, Heidegger's jug, or Wallace Stevens's jar forms the center around which we tend to organize our worlds.

The new aesthetics should restore fluidities between persons and things. In pursuing it, Johnson calls upon Ovid, Keats, Poe, Plath, and others who have inhabited this in-between space. The entire process operates via a subtlety that only a critic of Johnson's caliber could reveal to us.

BIOGRAPHY

Barbara Johnson, who has taught in the departments of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, is the Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society. She is the author of The Critical Difference, A World of Difference, and The Wake of Deconstruction.

This collection operates within the tradition of literary theory and deconstructive criticism, engaging with questions of representation, trope, and aesthetics. By examining texts by figures such as Keats, Poe, and Ovid alongside cultural artifacts like Barbie dolls, the volume navigates the shifting boundaries that separate the human subject from the inanimate object. The inquiry draws upon psychoanalytic and philosophical frameworks, including the ideas of Kant and Winnicott, to explore how fantasy life and aesthetic structures organize human experience around perceived voids.

Readers interested in the intersections of literature, psychoanalysis, and aesthetic theory may find this work relevant to their pursuits. The volume contributes to discussions within literary studies by reevaluating the mechanisms of poetic tropes and the ethical dimensions of treating persons as persons, drawing on diverse cultural and literary materials to address the relationship between art, psychology, and material objects.