Altered Reading: Levinas and LiteratureUniversity of Chicago Press, 1999 M05 15 - 185 pages How might the ethical philosophy of the renowned French thinker Emmanuel Levinas relate to literature? Because his philosophy addresses the very opening of ethical experience, it cannot be applied readily as a critical method to literary texts. Yet Levinas's work, studded as it is with literary sources and quotations, demands a literary account. With an attitude at once respectful and interrogative, closely attentive to Levinas's texts while in dialogue with readings by Derrida, Blanchot, and Bataille, Altered Reading shows how the thread of the literary leads directly to the internal tensions of Levinas's ethical discourse. Jill Robbins provides a comprehensive critical account of Levinas's early and mature philosophy as well as later key transitional essays. In an invaluable appendix, she includes her own translation of an important, previously untranslated essay by Bataille on Levinas. Altered Reading will interest philosophers, literary critics, scholars of religion, and others drawn to Levinas's work. |
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aesthetic Agnon's alterity autre Bataille biblical Christian Claudel concept death Derrida Difficult Freedom Dostoevsky double bind Emmanuel Levinas essay ethical discourse ethical language existentialism existentialist expression face face's figural interpretation habitual economy Hegel Heidegger hermeneutic imagination Jacques Derrida Jean Wahl Jean-François Lyotard Jewish Judaic Judaism Kierkegaard knowledge Levinas calls Levinas describes Levinas refers Levinas says Levinas writes Levinas's Levinas's descriptions Levinas's ethical Levinas's reading Levinasian Lévy-Bruhl literary literature Lyotard Maurice Blanchot meaning metaphysics midrashic Moses movement murder namely object ontology originary Paris passage Paul Claudel philosophy phrase poet poetic poetry possibility precisely present primordial putting into question rabbinic radical relation relationship responsibility rhetoric Rimbaud Robert Bernasconi Sartre scriptural sense signifies silence speak speech structure talmudic things thinking Thomas the Obscure thought tion Totality and Infinity trace tradition trans transcendence University Press violence visage Wahl's word