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Witness is an anthology comprising 40 critical essays from an international cast of researchers who engage with a complex set of questions concerning notions of witnessing and attestation in 20th- and 21st-century Western culture. The contributors provide insightful perspectives on the subject of witnessing and suggest how this vital yet relatively unexplored concept lends itself to a wide range of media and subject areas. The essays critically reconsider existing scholarly tendencies which focus on historical evidence and the witness' vocalization of true remembrance. They do this by establishing important links with canonical texts, images, and voices within a theoretical and interpretive framework where questions of mediation, memorization, and representation are addressed.
This volume clarifies the meanings and applications of the concept of the transnational and identifies areas in which the concept can be particularly useful. The division of the volume into three parts reflects areas which seem particularly amenable to analysis through a transnational lens. The chapters in Part 1 present case studies in which the concept replaces or complements traditionally dominant concepts in literary studies. These chapters demonstrate, for example, why some dramatic texts and performances can better be described as transnational than as postcolonial, and how the transnational underlies and complements concepts such as world literature. Part 2 assesses the advantages and...
How can we talk about World Literature if we do not actually examine the world as a whole? Research on World Literature commonly focuses on the dynamics of a western center and a southern periphery, ignoring the fact that numerous literary relationships exist beyond these established constellations of thinking and reading within the Global South. Re-Mapping World Literature suggests a different approach that aims to investigate new navigational tools that extend beyond the known poles and meridians of current literary maps. Using the example of Latin American literatures, this study provides innovative insights into the literary modeling of shared historical experiences, epistemological cros...
This book draws an updated Euro-American conceptual map, starting from a limited number of strategic terms whose meanings today are judged univocal and permanent, while in fact daily use has turned them into “common sense”, depriving them of their ambiguity – an original feature of language, particularly relevant when it comes to literary use. By re-examining the proper noun for each of the selected notions, the contributors’ common intent is to shed light on their polysemous nature and linguistic fluidity, in spite of the common tendency towards simplification and homogeneity imposed by hegemonic cultural paradigms. Along this line, the book explores the great divides between identity and otherness (or common or alien) in order to recover a sense of cultural identity which is at once polymorphous and polyphonic.
In the past years, reflections on Jewish literatures and theoretical and methodological approaches discussed in Comparative Literature have converged. Places and Forms of Encounter in Jewish Literatures. Transfer, Mediality and Situativity brings together close readings and contextualizations of Jewish literatures with theories discussed in Comparative and World Literature Studies. The contributions are arranged in five chapters capturing central processes, actors and dynamics in the making of literatures, namely Literary Agents, Literary Figures, Writing Voids, Making of Literatures and Perceiving and Creating Languages. The volume seeks to illuminate the interrelations between literary systems, and to highlight Jewish literatures as a prism for encounters on the levels of text, discourse and culture, and their transformative force.
This book provides a critical assessment of Benjamin’s writings on Franz Kafka and of Benjamin’s related writings. Eliciting from Benjamin’s writings a conception of philosophy that is political in its dissociation from – its becoming renegade in relation to, its philosophic shame about – established laws, norms, and forms, the book compares Benjamin’s writings with relevant works by Agamben, Heidegger, Levinas, and others. In relating Benjamin’s writings on Kafka to Benjamin’s writings on politics, the study delineates a philosophic impetus in literature and argues that this impetus has potential political consequences. Finally, the book is critical of Benjamin’s messianism insofar as it is oriented by the anticipated elimination of exceptions and distractions. Exceptions and distractions are, the book argues, precisely what literature, like other arts, brings to the fore. Hence the philosophic, and the political, importance of literature.
The central aim of this collection is to trace the presence of Jewish tradition in contemporary philosophy. This presence is, on the one hand, undeniable, manifesting itself in manifold allusions and influences – on the other hand, difficult to define, rarely referring to openly revealed Judaic sources. Following the recent tradition of Lévinas and Derrida, this book tentatively refers to this mode of presence in terms of "traces of Judaism" and the contributors grapple with the following questions: What are these traces and how can we track them down? Is there such a thing as "Jewish difference" that truly makes a difference in philosophy? And if so, how can we define it? The additional ...
A lively examination of the life and work of one of the great Enlightenment intellectuals Philosopher, translator, novelist, art critic, and editor of the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot was one of the liveliest figures of the Enlightenment. But how might we delineate the contours of his diverse oeuvre, which, unlike the works of his contemporaries, Voltaire, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, or Hume, is clearly characterized by a centrifugal dynamic? Taking Hegel's fascinated irritation with Diderot's work as a starting point, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht explores the question of this extraordinary intellectual's place in the legacy of the eighteenth century. While Diderot shared most of the concerns typical...
Paperback reprint. Originally published: 2020.
The debate over the concept of world literature, which has been taking place with renewed intensity over the last twenty years, is tightly bound up with the issues of global interconnectedness in a polycentric world. Most recently, critiques of globalization-related conceptualizations, in particular, have made themselves heard: to what extent is the concept of world literature too closely connected with the political and economic dynamics of globalization? Such questions cannot be answered simply through theoretical debate. The material side of the production of world literature must therefore be more strongly integrated into the conversation than it has been. Using the example of Latin American literatures, this volume demonstrates the concrete construction processes of world literature. To that purpose, archival materials have been analyzed here: notes, travel reports, and correspondence between publishers and authors. The Latin American examples provide particularly rich information about the processes of institutionalization in the Western world, as well as new perspectives for a contemporary mapping of world literature beyond the established dynamics of canonization.