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The mainstream European literary criticism opposes hermeneutics, phenomenology and existentialism in order to decentre the human subject and celebrate ´the destruction of reference´. The challenge of semiology is posed by allegiance of structuralism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction against the human subject. All of them celebrate a system of signs without a subject; Freudian psychoanalysis foregrounds the hidden mechanism of the unconscious, structuralism works on language as an autonomous system and deconstruction indulges in the operations of chance and a closed semiotic web. Confronted with the denial of the referential power of language, the repudiation of the subjectivity of both writers and readers and the rejection of language as a significant discourse of moral and aesthetic value, Paul Ricoeur sets himself the task of resurrecting the subject and the referential power of discourse. He introduces a hermeneutical project directed at opening the semiology of language to the drama of life and the world of action.

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Dr. Haggag Ali is a lecturer of literary and cultural criticism at the Academy of Arts in Cairo. He studied English Literature and critical theory at Cairo University. Dr. Ali had a number of fellowships in Germany and he has been working on critical theories of modernity(Paul Riceour, Zygmunt Bauman, Eric Voegelin and Abdelwahab Elmessiri).

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