Table of Contents

Preface to the New Edition ix SHOSHANA FELMAN Foreword to The Scandal of the Speaking Body xi STANLEY CAVELL The Scandal of the Speaking Body Preface: The Promising Animal 3 1 Between Linguistics and Philosophy of Langauge: Theories of Promise, Promises of Theory 6 2 The Perversion of Promising: Don Juan and Literary Performance 12 3 The Scandal of the Performative 41 4 Knowledge and Pleasure, or the Philosopher's Performance (Psychoanalysis and the Performative) 48 Afterword 113 JUDITH BUTLER Notes I25 Index 138 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Speech acts (Linguistics) Performative (Philosophy) Moli ere, 1622-1673, Dom Juan, Don Juan (Legendary character) in literature, Comedy, Austin, J, L, (John Langshaw), 1911-1960

About the Author

Shoshana Felman is the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Her books include Literature and Psychoanalysis, Writing and Madness (in a new edition from Stanford University Press), Testimony, and (most recently) The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century.

Reviews

"The Scandal of the Speaking Body - one of the most brilliant and daring and disturbing works of its period, which appeared in English translation in 1984 [under the title The Literary Speech Act] ... has never found the full radius of readers it assumes and deserves." - From the Forewordby Stanley Cavell