Altered Reading

Levinas and Literature

By: Jill Robbins

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Hardcover | 15 May 1999 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
200 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.36 x 1.59 x 0.18

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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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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Philosophy History of Western Philosophy Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature Literary Theory Ethics & Moral Philosophy Philosophy & Aesthetics Miscellaneous Items

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Abbreviations	p. ix
Introduction	p. xiii
Literature in Levinas's Ethical Philosophy
On Call From the Other: Ethical Language in Totality and Infinity	p. 3
Discourse and Gift	p. 3
Metaphysical Asymmetry	p. 10
Rhetoric and the Face	p. 16
Tracing Responsibility	p. 20
Absolutely Toward the Future	p. 20
The Face	p. 23
Tracing an Absolute Past in Levinas and Derrida	p. 26
The Trace of God	p. 32
Facing Figures	p. 39
The Literary Question	p. 39
The Claims of Figural Interpretation	p. 41
Lacking Figure	p. 42
Too Many Figures	p. 45
Losing Face	p. 48
Turning Away from Art	p. 50
Visage, Figure: Speech and Murder in Totality and Infinity	p. 55
Just Speaking	p. 55
Speaking Face	p. 57
Speaking Murder	p. 63
And Cain Said to Abel	p. 69
Levinas and the Aesthetic
Aesthetic Totality and Ethical Infinity	p. 75
Poetry and the Ethical	p. 75
Theorizing the Work of Art	p. 82
Art, Philosophy, and the IL Y A	p. 91
Allusions and Abridgements	p. 91
Bataille on Description and Cry	p. 97
Jean Wahl's Existentialisms	p. 101
Cries and Lacerations (Kierkegaard)	p. 104
Levinas Reading Kierkegaard	p. 109
Citation and the Art of Totality and Infinity	p. 117
The Alibi of Metaphysics	p. 117
Levinas Reading Rimbaud	p. 119
The Alterity of Literature	p. 127
Exceptions	p. 132
The Frozen Face	p. 132
Nameless	p. 134
The Knots of Agnon	p. 136
Improper Naming	p. 143
Levinas Reading Dostoevsky	p. 147
The Example of Blanchot	p. 150
Review Essay, "From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,"	p. 155
Index	p. 181
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Altered Reading

Levinas and Literature

At a Glance

Hardcover

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