Turns out that Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” is just another variation on the same set of themes that Derrida is obsessed with — the son’s murder of the father. For Bloom, the son is the “strong poet” who resists the influence of his predecessor/father in order to carve out space for his own work. Bloom is more openly Freudian and Oedipal than Derrida, but the mythology is the same. Is the whole of postmodernism just this ?Ea Trinitarianism inverted in the direction of Hesiod and Sophocles?
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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