The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of ViolenceExplores how violence structures language and the writing of literature and philosophy. Within the violence our societies must confront today exists a dimension proper to language. Anyone who has been through the educational system, for example, recognizes how language not only shapes and models us, but also imposes itself upon us. During the twentieth century, this system revealed how language can condemn one to a certain death. In The Vocation of Writing, philosopher Marc Crépon explores this dimension of language, convinced that the node of all violence pertains first to language and how we make use of it. Crépon focuses on Kafka, Levinas, Singer, and Derrida, not only because each rose against commandeering language in order to warn against the next massacres, but also because their work affirms the vocation of writing that which makes literature and philosophy the final weapon for unmasking the violence and hatred that language bears at its heart. To affirm the vocation of writing is to turn language against itself, to defuse its murderous potentialities by opening it toward exchange, responsibility, and humanity when the latter fixes the other and the world as its goals. |
Contents
1 SelfKnowledge A Reading of Kafkas Diaries | 17 |
2 Impossible Anamnesis Kafka and Derrida | 37 |
3 Shares of Singularity CelanDerrida | 51 |
4 On a Constellation Levinas Derrida Blanchot Readers of Celan | 65 |
5 that tumor in the memory Levinas | 81 |
6 On Shame Levinas | 91 |
7 A balancing pole over the Abyss Victor Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich | 101 |
8 Duped by Violence? A Reading of Sartre | 113 |
The Novel A Reading of Kertészs Galley BoatLog | 137 |
11 a profound feeling of protest A Reading of Singer | 149 |
Arendt Sebald Perec | 157 |
13 On Fear of Dying Three Russian Stories | 169 |
Notes | 183 |
| 193 | |
| 197 | |
9 the spirit of storytelling A Reading of Kertész | 125 |
Other editions - View all
The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence Marc Crépon Limited preview - 2018 |
The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence Marc Crépon No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
analysis anamnesis Arendt Auschwitz become Blanchot calls ceaselessly colonized comes constellation constitutes Crépon culture dates death demand Derrida Diaries différance Ellis Island escape ethical European everything existence fact Fatelessness fear finally force freedom French give Hannah Arendt Hans Bender heart Holocaust human idiom imagine impossible Imre Kertész inscribed invention Jews judgments Kafka Kafka’s story Klemperer Levinas Levinas’s literature live madness Mandelstam Maurice Blanchot meaning memory Meridian moral murderous consent narrative never novel one’s oneself Osip Mandelstam partage Paul Celan perhaps philosophy poem poetic poetry political possible Primo Levi protest question racism radical reading recalls relation to language remains responsibility Sartre Sartre’s secret self-knowledge sense shame Shibboleth Singer singularity sovereign sovereignty speak speech spirit of storytelling stake takes terror Third Reich thought tion totalitarian Totality and Infinity translation modified tribunal truth turn Vasily Grossman violence vocation words writing