While one might wonder if the author is troweling on the negativity too much in regards to the life of the once-renowned intellectual, at a certain point the mind begins to boggle at the glittering but dishonest life that the subject of this book led before becoming a settled professor. Most damning is not De Man's collaborationist past, as due to the accidents of family and class it was the logical political stance to take. No, the utter pit of betrayal for De Man would have been his post-war activities as a publisher, which appear to have been wholly a confidence scheme from the start, and which severely damaged his family and led to his exile from Belgium one step ahead of the hand of the authorities.

From there the story told is one of De Man's cobbling together his persona of the austere & inscrutable thinker, largely when at the end of available options and having no place left to fly. One can only speculate then on the worth of theories coming from an individual who seems to have betrayed just about every personal and professional confidence in their life before that point. About the only thing that explains (if not excuses) this series of dubious adventures is the whiff of mental illness that hung over De Man's family. I respond to all this rather strongly in as much as there used to be someone very important in my life who also seems on the verge of losing a glittering career and desirable life due to mental illness; while I regard this as a tragedy I also care more about the people who they have hurt.

As for whether there is anything to be salvaged from the academic contributions of De Man, while Barish is reluctant to give the man any benefit of the doubt she suggests in her epilog that his skepticism about language and meaning was liberating to a generation desiring racial and gender liberation and who were seeking weapons against cant and prejudice. The difference is that these people fighting for the recognition of their humanity redeemed De Man's thought through a conviction and commitment that De Man displayed little of in the first half of his adult life; one suspects that Barish finds this to be insufficient recompense for what were at least major systemic errors in judgement.

The one thing that gives me some pause is, as has been suggested elsewhere, that the author seems to have a major issue with De Man (they were colleagues at one point), as if being angry over having been taken in by the man's undoubted charisma. I could have also passed on some of the neo-Freudian imagery Barish deploys at some points in the book. ( )