The Emergence of Literature: An Archaeology of Modern Literary Theory

Description

The Emergence of Literature is an extension and reworking of a series of significant propositions in philosophy and literary theory: Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's examination of the concept of the literary absolute; Martin Heidegger's destruction and Giorgio Agamben's archaeology of the metaphysics of will; Maurice Blanchot's delimitation of the space of literature; and Michel Foucault's archaeology of literature. Its core contribution to the history of theory is to understand the literary absolute not simply as philosophical concept, but as a paradigm that delimits the horizon for currents of literary theory through the course of the 20th century where the literary criteria change from the theme of sincerity to the theme of the death of the author. Stretching from Kant to Hegel, from Hoelderlin to the Early German Romantics, from John Stuart Mill to New Criticism, from Benjamin to Barthes, The Emergence of Literature examines the relation between continental philosophy and literature in the post-Kantian era. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Note on Text Abbreviations Introduction: Writerly Necessity Part One The Emergence of Literature as Absolute 1 Literature as Pure Writing Literature: A “Solution” to a Kantian Problem The Pure Philosophical Writing: Hegel’s Absolute Subject 2 The Literary Absolute A Philosophical Study of Literature The Method of The Literary Absolute I The Method of The Literary Absolute II Fragmentation: The Operation of The Literary Absolute Witz: The Question of the Interruption I The Question of the Subject The Fragmentary Will Unworking: The Question of the Interruption II Hölderlin and the Literary Absolute 3 The Born Poet The Emergence of the Subject Who Cannot Not-Write The Subject Who Cannot Not-Write Intransitively The Problem of Pure Writing in Hölderlin’s Theoretical Texts “The Question of Literature” Hölderlin and the Romantics Threshold Part two The Paradigm of Writerly Necessity 4 Between the Subject and Language Hölderlin in Foucault’s Early Thought Literature: The Subject and Language Literature: The Thought of Contingency Literature as Counter-Discourse: Between the Subject and Language The Absence of Work: Literature and Madness Foucault and Blanchot: Literature, Madness, and the Outside 5 The Paradigm of Writerly Necessity The Subjectivation of the Literary Absolute The Enunciative Positions of Writerly Necessity Double Negativity 6 The Writer Who Cannot Not-Desire to Write The Desiring Subject Double Negativity The Subject and the Work The Incessant Dying: The Neurotic Subject One Lack Visible: The Perverse Subject The Double Lack Visible: Between Madness and Contingency Threshold Part three Literary Criticism 7 The Author (Sincerity) Sincerity: The Primary Criterion of Literature in the Nineteenth Century New Criticism: The Transposition of the Criterion of Sincerity 8 The Death of the Author (Intransitivity) From Sincerity to Intransitivity The Question of the Author’s Death Life without Negation 9 The Politics of a priori Poetry The Poetized: Life and Literature The Question of a priori Poetry Threshold Part four Aesthetics 10 Literature in the Age of Criticism Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Romantic Form without Content The Subject Positions of Art The Romantic Genius 11 The Critic The Destruction of Aesthetics Art: The Interruption and the Form without Content The Critic Literature as Criticism 12 To Write as an Intransitive Verb The Sincere Critic The Will to Write Intransitive Writing The Amateur The Pure Potentiality of Writing Threshold Afterthought on Literary Inoperativity Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index