Philosophy of Literature, Misc

English Title “Living Philosophy: Beauvoir’s Memoirs as a philosophical ‘œuvre’”. This paper seeks to remedy the lack of philosophical analyses of the philosophical dimension of Beauvoir’s autobiographical work in using the existentialist link Beauvoir establishes between life and philosophy to make three points: first, her Memoirs constitute a crucial documentary resource to understand Beauvoir’s essays and the original philosophical stance she defends in them. Second, Memoirs show a two-way relationship between philosophy and life, on an epistemic and on a practical (...) level. Third, autobiography is a way to overcome the inherent flaws of philosophy when it’s written in 3rd person: only a literary account allows to make appear a singular universal that displays the tension between situation and freedom in an authentic way. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.comThe adaptation of literary works into films has been almost completely neglected as a philosophical topic. I discuss two questions about this phenomenon:What do we mean when we say that a film is faithful to its source?Is being faithful to its source a merit in a film adaptation?In response to, I set out two distinct (...) senses of fidelity: story fidelity and thematic fidelity. I then argue, in response to, that thematic fidelity, but not story fidelity, is an aesthetic merit in a film adaptation. The key steps in this argument involve showing that merely preserving the story from one medium to another does not typically involve an aesthetically... (shrink)

Mikhail Bakhtin aimed to invent a phenomenology of the self-experience and of the experience of the other in his early work. In order to realize such a phenomenology he combined different approaches he called idealism and materialism / naturalism. The first one he linked to Edmund Husserl, but did hardly name him directly concerning his phenomenology. Does this intersubjective phenomenology give a hint that Bakhtin used Husserlian ideas more than considered yet? Or did they both invent similar ideas independently from (...) each other? Both thinkers dealt with the issue of intersubjectivity. Husserl judged statements on other psycho-physical realities as metaphysics in the Logical Investigations II, but in his Ideas I he described the others as enhancing one’s experience through their “experiential surpluses”. In the same way Bakhtin described the unique perspective of the other as a mandatory and valuable part of the world of the act in his Philosophy of the Act and his investigations on Author and Hero. In order to understand the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology for Bakhtin’s early philosophy we need to take a look closer at those contentual parallels as well as some paraphrases yet unnoticed. This gives hint for the question if for Bakhtin Husserl was more than just a name dropped. In this article I reconstructed the relations between both thinkers and answered the question if the dating of Bakhtin’s early work until 1928 has to be re-considered. (shrink)

Recensione del testo di Giorgio Agamben, "Gusto".

It is widely agreed that fiction is necessarily incomplete, but some recent work postulates the existence of universal fictions—stories according to which everything is true. Building such a story is supposedly straightforward: authors can either assert that everything is true in their story, define a complement function that does the assertoric work for them, or, most compellingly, write a story combining a contradiction with the principle of explosion. The case for universal fictions thus turns on the intuitive priority we assign (...) to the law of non-contradiction. My goal in this paper is to show that our critical and reflective literary practices set constraints on story-telling which preclude universal fictions. I will raise four stumbling blocks for universal fictionalists: the gap between saying and making true, our actual interpretive reactions to story-level contradictions, the criteria we accept for what counts as a story in our literary practices, and the undesirability of the universal fictionalist’s closure principles. (shrink)

Es mi afirmación que la tabla de intencionalidad (racionalidad, mente, pensamiento, lenguaje, personalidad, etc.) que presenta prominentemente aquí describe más o menos con precisión, o al menos sirve como heurística para, cómo pensamos y nos comportamos, y por lo tanto no abarca simplemente filosofía y psicología, sino todo lo demás (historia, literatura, matemáticas, política, etc.). Tenga en cuenta especialmente que la intencionalidad y racionalidad como yo (junto con Searle, Wittgenstein y otros) lo veo, incluye tanto el Sistema Linguístico deliberativo consciente (...) 2 como las acciones o reflejos inconscientes automatizados del Sistema 1 automatizado. Proporciono una encuesta crítica de algunos de los principales hallazgos de dos de los estudiantes más eminentes del comportamiento de los tiempos modernos, Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle, sobre la estructura lógica de la intencionalidad (mente, lenguaje, comportamiento), tomando como punto de partida El descubrimiento fundamental de Wittgenstein -que todos los problemas verdaderamente "filosóficos" son los mismos —confusiones sobre cómo usar el lenguaje en un contexto particular, y por lo tanto todas las soluciones son iguales— mirando cómo se puede utilizar el lenguaje en el contexto en cuestión para que su verdad condiciones (Condiciones de Satisfacción o COS) son claras. El problema básico es que se puede decir cualquier cosa, pero no se puede significar (indicar COS claro para) cualquier expresión arbitraria y significado sólo es posible en un contexto muy específico. Analizo varios escritos por y sobre ellos desde la perspectiva moderna de los dos sistemas de pensamiento (popularizados como 'pensar rápido, pensar lento'), empleando una nueva tabla de intencionalidad y nueva nomenclatura de sistemas duales. Demuestro que esta es una heurística poderosa para describir el comportamiento. Por lo tanto, todo comportamiento está íntimamente conectado si uno toma el punto de vista correcto. La Ilusión Fenomenológica (olvido a nuestro Sistema automatizado 1) es universal y se extiende no sólo a lo largo de la filosofía, sino a lo largo de la vida. Estoy seguro de que Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg y el Papa serían incrédulos si se les dijera que sufren del mismo problema que Hegel, Husserl y Heidegger, (o que difieren sólo en grado de los adictos a las drogas y el sexo en estar motivados por la estimulación de su cortices frontales por la entrega de dopamina (y más de 100 otros productos químicos) a través del tegmentum ventral y el núcleo accumbens), pero es claramente cierto. Mientras que los fenomenólogos sólo desperdiciaron mucho el tiempo de la gente, están desperdiciando la tierra y el futuro de sus descendientes. (shrink)

Memorialization in the form of the architectural statue can suggest that our stance towards the past is concrete while memorials in the form of repeated social activity represent reconciliation with the past as a continual process. Enacted memorials suggest that reconciliation with the past is not itself a thing of the past. Each generation must grapple with its inherited memories, guilt, and grief and self-consciously take its own stance towards that which came before it. This article considers Dominik Smole’s post (...) World War II rewrite of Antigona as an enacted memorial within the context of socialist Yugoslavia. The practice of restaging Antigona in Slovenia may be seen as the practice of meta-memorialization, which routinely returns to the past while openly weighing the dangers of awakening the unburied dead against the dangers of letting the unaddressed conflicts of the past sleep. (shrink)

Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by (...) sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. Freud’s notes on speaking in one’s sleep, telepathy, the mystic writing-pad, and memory are revisited and supplemented with the writings of Hélène Cixous on the taste of words, telephoning, saying-to-oneself, and forgetting. The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the metaphysical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue in and on the mouth as the scene of writing (ever accompanied by tastes of life-death). (shrink)

THE IMMORTAL FLY: ETERNAL WHISPERS. WHO IS SHE? Author: Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri. Everytime I am missing her. By now, a year has passed without 'her' . Even though, unlike before, everything is becoming to be more scattered, gloomy and desolate. She is no-where to hear my words,whom I can still only share my feelings intensely. Even now, when I do close my eyes, I can visualize the same that I had left a year since on 7th February, 2019 at 8.20A.M. (...) in the hospital struggling a continuous period of fifty days : on the fifty one day, my father said, ”The End of our Fifty Years relationship has been completed with the Fifty Days”….’Whoever’ she was to others may, but she is our legend…To me, she is ‘My Ma’. -/- The story begins,'I failed preciously on success of my life.' Simplicity,Innocence, Belief and Faith met unknowingly with filthy waves skillfully immersed in Betray,Sorcery,Jealousy, Greediness,Revenge,Lie... ‘’ The Daughter writes, “I had asked Ma many times, but her ‘impenetrable personality’ and dynamic words to everyone with a tinge of smile as reflected on her face, she was reluctant to continue her conversation with me. I had thought, hence, I must not be indefinite on my spoken words. Who shall I blame!” Based on true story of a family came from South Calcutta (India) to a suburb, on staying at home of the Daughter’s maternal grandmother’s house, this book reveals in facts and true events how Destiny had unknowingly ‘further’ played an abominable role to Fate of The Daughter, when eventually one day on 7th February, 2019 everything was finished within 8.20A.M. The Daughter is, therefore, left alone on terrestrial with immortal words as written in her Diary, ‘Eternal Whispers’: “My words to self that I am to fulfill my Ma’s - wish. ’’ ‘’ -/- • Keywords: 1. Diary and True Events 2. The Chaotic Society 3. Fatality 4. Of A-Family 5. Science , Philosophy and Literature 6. Severe Depression 7. Medical Journey. -/- The Alternative Title of the Book: The Greatest Mistake or Fortune:: The book is mainly carrying with intense words of a journey of the relationship between a Mother with her Daughter has left readers in an abrupt situation where to define indeed "Man is the creature under circumstances..." -/- . (shrink)

The paper is an examination and critique of the philosophy of science fiction horror of seminal American horror, science fiction and fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Lovecraft never directly offers a philosophy of science fiction horror. However, at different points in his essays and letters, he addresses genres he labels “interplanetary fiction”, “horror”, “supernatural horror”, and “weird fiction”, the last being a broad heading covering both supernatural fiction and science fiction. Taken together, a philosophy of science fiction horror emerges. Central (...) to this philosophy is the juxtaposition of the mysterious, unnatural and alien against a realistic background, in order to produce the emotion that Lovecraft calls “cosmic fear”. This background must not only be scientifically accurate, but must accurately portray human psychology, particularly when humans are faced with the weird and alien. It will be argued that Lovecraft’s prescriptions are overly restrictive and would rule out many legitimate works of science fiction horror art. However, he provides useful insights into the genre. (shrink)

In the following essay, I argue that in the case of some works of art, moral evaluation should not play a role in artistic appraisal. While I reject the strong ethicist’s view—the view that moral evaluation may inform the artistic evaluation of any artwork—I will not do so in favor of the aestheticist’s position. The aestheticist argues for a rigid distinction between the moral and aesthetic evaluation of an artwork. On this view, the moral status of the work is independent (...) of and irrelevant to artistic value. This view would allow us, for example, to evaluate Leni Reifenstahl’s film The Triumph of the Will as a superior work of cinematic art, while at the same time condemning it on moral grounds. Rather than support a strict separation of aesthetic and moral elements in an artwork, I will suggest that in the case of certain types of artwork, it is inappropriate to use moral criteria in their artistic evaluation—even though the work’s moral content contributes to its artistic value. This is the case in artworks that (1) are “interrogative” in form and (2) have moral dilemmas as their principal theme. Briefly put, an interrogative artwork is one that poses a question or problem that remains unresolved in the work. I will begin by explaining in more detail what I mean by an interrogative artwork. Using the example of Duchamp’s “ready-made” sculpture Fountain, I will argue that it is inappropriate to artistically evaluate such works by appeal to criteria that they themselves call into question. I will then turn to the specific issue of morally interrogative artworks. I will consider Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a paradigmatic case of an interrogative artwork that poses an unresolved moral problem, and will contrast my own rejection of the moral appraisal of the novel to Wayne Booth’s attempt to provide a morally informed positive assessment of the novel. (shrink)

The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On this progressive reading, although (...) both characters are initially mired in bad faith and ethical irresponsibility, they ultimately transform themselves into ethically exemplary figures. Through their participation in violent political resistance against the occupation, they recognize their responsibility to humanity and actualize that responsibility in the form of positive political engagement. I will argue, on the contrary, that Jean and Hélène exhibit a unique form of bad faith that Beauvoir identifies in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a dangerous form of bad faith, distinct from the Sartrean conception, that promotes the indiscriminate use of violence for political ends. (shrink)

У статті вперше здійснено інтерпретацію поетичних текстів Олега Лишеги шляхом звернення до концепції барокового коду. Проаналізовані таким чином, зокрема, «пісня 822», «Півень», «Шовковиця», «Ворон», «Пацюк» і «пісня 3». Саме крізь призму барокового коду варто розглядати ці поезії, оскільки головні світоглядні риси бароко здатні пояснити ті чи ті образи або ситуації, які читач знаходить у текстах. Варто також наголосити на непересічності образу Григорія Сковороди у творчості Олега Лишеги, адже у поезіях «Великого мосту» можна неодноразово знайти чи то сковородинські образи/символи, чи то (...) його концепти, що були близькі для поета ХХ століття. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено сакральним мотивам у поезії М. Вінграновського. Розглянуто правопис слова «Бог» у ранніх і пізніших поезіях автора, вказано на тексти з релігійною образністю і тематикою (зокрема проаналізовано неопубліковані рукописи). Наведено свідчення сучасників поета про його стосунки з Богом. Зроблено спробу показати, що засвідчена заангажованість М. Вінграновського в релігійний дискурс дає підстави розгортати інтерпретацію його поезій також і в межах цього дискурсу, зокрема – в аспекті поєднання однини і множини на мовному рівні, а також в аспекті відчуття загальної всеєдності як (...) складника переживання всеприсутності Бога, яку засвідчують різні релігійні традиції. (shrink)

У статті вперше проведено аналіз закордонного листування М. В. Гоголя 1836 року у площині праці письменника над фрагментами мандрівного письма, які з’являються у певному колі листів: до рідних, близьких друзів та знайомих. Саме у цьому адресному колі листів М. В. Гоголя і виник підпростір листів – ескізів майбутніх мандрівних фрагментів «Мертвих душ». У статті вказано на те, що в основі системних проб М. В. Гоголя у мандрівному письмі лежить перетин різних мотивів і причин. Ядром досить тривалого періоду напрацювання М. В. (...) Гоголем власного стилю мандрівного письма у 1836 р. стає особиста перевірка на письмі неавторизованих діалогічних сцен «Як пишуться мандрівки?» Ф. Марріета та перегляд роману «Рейнські пілігрими» Е. Дж. БульвераЛіттона крізь критичні зауваження В. Г. Бєлінського до автора цього роману. У статті наведено приклади художнього перенесення фрагментів мандрівного письма із закордонного листування М. В. Гоголя 1836 року у фрагменти першого тому «Мертвих душ». (shrink)

Статтю присвячено перелікові книг, заборонених для доступу у бібліотеці колегіуму Товариства Ісуса у Перемишлі. Ідентифікацію та аналіз цієї літератури здійснено на основі рукописного інвентаря бібліотеки, що його уклав у 1774 р., після ліквідації Товариства Ісуса, Станіслав Хмельовський. Загальна кількість книг Перемишльської бібліотеки охоплювала 6985 позицій, а до групи «haereteci prohibiti» було внесено 137 видань, з яких вдалося ідентифікувати 102. У статті ці праці умовно поділено на п’ять підгруп: 1) твори ренесансних гуманістів, 2) протестантські автори, 3) православні автори, 4) книги з (...) окультизму, магії та демонології, 5) «книги таємниць». До першої підгрупи увійшли твори Еразма Ротердамського та Ніколо Мак’явелі, до другої — праці протестантських мислителів (Ян Гус, Мартін Лютер, Філіп Меланхтон, Жан Кальвін, Теодор Беза, Ян Крель та інші), до третьої — трактати Лазаря Барановича та Йоаникія Ґалятовського, до четвертої — книжки Мартіна Дельріо, Бартоломео Спіни, Ніколя Ремі та ін., до п’ятої — твори Джамбатісти делла Порта та Йогана Якоба Веккера. Реконструкція переліку заборонених книг у бібліотеці Перемишльського колегіуму дає змогу детальніше пізнати інтелектуальні запити духовенства, а також дослідити, які тексти єзуїти могли використовувати для полеміки з іновірцями. (shrink)

The novel begins as follows:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence."Murdoch's novel (...) The Bell is about Imber Court. It is a small Anglican religious community of lay people whose lives were transformed, not just by the arrival of a couple of dissimilar visitors, not just by the arrival of a new bell to be installed at Imber Abbey located beyond the lake, but more significantly by the discovery of a centuries-old bell the story of which is engulfed in a terrible legend. (shrink)

The difference between Derrida and Deleuze has been debated in terms of their understandings and uses of the historical distinction between Being and beings. Daniel W. Smith intersects with the question when discussing transcendence and immanence. Clair Colebrook intersects when discussing materialism. Paul Patton intersects when distinguishing the unconditioned and conditioned. This essay moves along with their ideas, and contributes to the discussion by re-inscribing the debate in terms of nouns and verbs. The conclusion suggests that the noun/verb prism yields (...) a view of the question about Being and beings that fits most easily into Smith’s conception of the relation between Derrida and Deleuze. Thematically, the essay is framed by a line from Derrida’s eulogy for Deleuze, and by a question. The line is Derrida recollecting Deleuze commenting that, "It’s painful for me to see you spending so much time on the College International de Philosophie. I would rather you wrote..." The question addressed to the prolific Derrida and Deleuze is: “How much writing is enough?” Why do individuals with limited time who have already written numerous and thick volumes of philosophy choose to go ahead and write more? (shrink)

The article focuses on the cartographic enactment of the topos of Ukraine as a lost homeland in contemporary German literary discourse on migration, and in particular in the body of work that conveys the voices of the “second generation” — children of the German (post-)war migration. The article analyses by way of an illustrative example Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s poem “Flight into Kyiv,” in which we find reflected the autobiographical theme of the (re)construction of the lost homeland of his father, a Volyn (...) German who fled to Germany during the Second World War to escape reprisals of the Soviet army. The main object of research are the mental maps of Ukrainian space, which largely define the way Ukraine is represented both in contemporary German social discourse and in modern German literature. A textual analysis of the poem allows us to discern how the resource of the Western European construct of Eastern Europe is instrumentalized and aesthetically arranged by German (post)migration perception to institutionalize the image of Ukraine as a “lost homeland.”. (shrink)

During the last ten years of his life, Antonin Artaud shows more and more intensively a multi-faceted and caustic refusal for traditional literature and the ordinary practice of writing. But above all, he shows a stylistic impatience for the alphabetic use of the word and the language. By the intention of creating an inhuman language, which could be understood also by the illiterate people, Artaud wants to undermine the significant use of the word, so that he can achieve a non-representative (...) language, a language that could make real. In this perspective, the aim of our work consists in an inquiry of the expressive forms through which Artaud’s last literary production shows the refusal of canonical literature: especially, we attempt to work about the use of glossolalias, drawings and pictograms included in several Cahiers which Artaud draws up during his confinement in the Rodez’s madhouse, as well as in some of the letters that he writes since 1943. (shrink)

Literatur ist ein sehr vielschichtiges und lebendiges Phänomen, das beständig im Wandel ist. So wie sie im Laufe der Jahrhunderte und in den verschiedenen Kulturkreisen unter-schiedliche Formen angenommen und anderen Funktionen gedient hat, liegt es in ihrer Natur, immer wieder neue Ausdrucksformen zu entwickeln, die den sich ändernden Be-dürfnissen und Rahmenbedingungen gerecht werden können. Auch die theoretische Aus-einandersetzung mit der Literatur ist Veränderungen unterworfen, die manchmal wellen-förmige Bewegungen anzunehmen scheinen. Neue Fragestellungen geraten in den Mittel-punkt des Interesses, einzelne Aspekte werden (...) besonders beachtet, während andere in Vergessenheit geraten – um eventuell zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt in neuer Form wieder-aufzutauchen. In der Philosophie der Literatur gilt es seit Längerem als weithin anerkannt, dass der Text die entscheidende Größe sei, und dass die Tatsache, dass an der Produktion und Rezeption von literarischen Kunstwerken Menschen beteiligt sind, die mit diesen Werken Ziele verfolgen und Wünsche und Interessen verwirklichen wollen, ignoriert werden kön-ne. Im vorliegenden Beitrag will ich auf die gegenwärtige Diskussion in der Philosophie der Literatur eingehen und für einen Perspektivenwechsel argumentieren: Um dem Phä-nomen Literatur gerecht zu werden, sollten wir versuchen, es ganzheitlich in das Blickfeld zu bekommen. Literatur ist mehr als bloß Text. Sie ist eine soziale Praxis, die einen festen Stellenwert in unserer Gesellschaft hat und stellt ein Medium dar, in dem wir uns mit an-deren austauschen und auf sie abstimmen können. Mein Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf der Debatte um den kognitiven Gehalt der Literatur, weil hier die negativen Auswirkungen der Verkürzung der vorherrschenden Perspektive besonders augenscheinlich sind. (shrink)

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a frequent point of reference for Edward Said’s investigations into the various forces that structure and define the encounter of imperial societies with others. In Culture and Imperialism, Said explains the importance of Conrad’s novella by linking it to his concept of culture as the aesthetic acme of a society that simultaneously marks it and divides it from others. In Heart of Darkness, Said claims, we have a narrative that challenges its own imperial society (...) by emphasizing the ambiguity of its cultural limit. Heart of Darkness is thereby able to dramatize and emphasize the constituent elements of imperial society, even as it is unable to exceed that society’s fundamental character. Said’s reading is important, and even vital, for an appreciation of the complexities of Conrad’s novella, but it does not go far enough. The ambiguity of Conrad’s depiction of imperial society is only an ambiguity to the extent that the novella is critiqued at the level of content, with a corresponding lack of emphasis upon its rhetorical form. Through a consideration of the three primary elements of this form – the careful situation of the Nellie as the site of the narrative, the work of interruption in Marlow’s narrative, and the reverberation of Kurtz’s dying words in the conclusion of the novella – this essay argues that there is very little ambiguity in Conrad’s text. Indeed, what ambiguity remains is a function of its effort to dramatize the limit of imperialism precisely as a limitation, as a cultural determinant that through its form perpetually determines other societies as inferior, even as this very culture, as a limit set against these other societies, shows their richness to which imperialism is essentially blind. (shrink)

Recensione di J. L. NANCY, T. TUPPINI, Être bourré, o del corpo senza corpo, Mimesis, Milano-Udine2014.

Recensione di "La grande straniera. A proposito di letteratura", di Michel Foucault.

contents -/- i. for Shakespeare's Richard the Third -/- ii. the truth is i pass over so many words -/- iii. the boori nazar / nadhar -/- iv. i've awe for jihaad -/- v. short review: Hail, Caesar! -/- vi. a minute of Nothing, gone from YouTube -/- vii. we were rivalrous friends, again -/- viii. my bardo pdf -/- ix. within i'm a weak old mandarin .

This essay considers the relation between Don Quixote's hunger and the disenchantment (Entzauberung) that Max Weber understood as paradigmatic of the modern condition. Whereas hunger functions within a Hegelian dialectic of desire in Cervantes' novel, literary representations of hunger from later periods (in Kafka and post-Holocaust Polish poetry) acknowledge the cosmic insignificance of human need by substituting the desire for recognition with a desire for self-abdication. While Don Quixote's hunger drives him to seek recognition for his dream world, modern literature's (...) hungry heroes respond to hunger by changing their metaphysical identities. Like desire, hunger functions in the literatures of modernity as an index of psychic wholeness or of its lack, both enabling and resisting the hero's assimilation with the world outside the self. (shrink)

In the novel "Het Been" by the Flemish writer Willem Elsschot. In the novel, a businessman becomes obsessive over the fact that a victim of his unscrupulous business practices refuses to forgive him. This raises the following questions: Why does one find it upsetting when the victim of one's wrongdoing refuses to accept our apologies? Why does one find it upsetting when the victim is unwilling to grant us the forgiveness that we are asking for?

Book review of Moi, Toril, _Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell,_ Chicago : Chicago University Press, 2017. 290 pages.

The majority of the papers in the present volume were presented at, or prepared in conjunction with, meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy, a group of philosophers interested in the work of Brentano and Husserl and of the ...

This paper explores Victoria Welby's fundamental assumption of meaning process (“semiosis” sensu Peirce) as translation, and some implications for the development of a general model of intersemiotic translation.

-/- The closing paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road hums with mystery. Some find it suggestive of renewal, though only vaguely. Others contend that it does little to ameliorate the novel’s pessimism. Still others find it offers both lamentation and hopefulness, while some pass it over in silence. As an admirer with a taste for puzzle solving, here I offer a new interpretation revealing a surprisingly optimistic denouement.

The current issue of Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal (2015, vol. 5, no. 1) provides a platform for cross‑cultural studies of the human body, the embodied mind, agency, intentionality, and various axiological aspects of the human psychophysical identity. Out of the twenty articles that compose this issue, thirteen original papers address the leading theme, namely Psychophysical integrity of the human self. Comparative approach: philosophy, literature and art. The multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives include references to Western and eastern cultural traditions, as well (...) as juxtaposing a variety of views on human corporeality and the mind‑body relationship, discussed from the perspectives of philosophical theories (Venieri, Jakubczak, Kamińska, Kołdrzak, King, Wachowski), literary works (Kamińska, Milewska) and visual artefacts (King, Staniszewska, Wałek, Popczyk, Romanowicz, Lipowicz). (shrink)

Michael Ryan's Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition introduces students to the full range of contemporary approaches to the study of literature and culture, from Formalism, Structuralism, and Historicism to Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and Global English. Introduces readings from a variety of theoretical perspectives, on classic literary texts. Demonstrates how the varying perspectives on texts can lead to different interpretations of the same work. Contains an accessible account of different theoretical approaches An ideal resource for use in introductory (...) courses on literary theory and criticism. Designed to function both as a stand-alone text and a companion to Rivkin and Ryan’s Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. (shrink)

The paper investigates the relationship between political oratory and literature in Romania during the second part of the 19th century. Extending the theories of Jacques Rancière, Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižec, and Leonidas Donskis, I analyze the relationship between politics and literature by comparing a set of illustrative speeches delivered by Take Ionescu and P. P. Carp, who distinguished themselves as brilliant political orators and also as personalities who gave up literature in order to assume a political career. My main goal (...) is to determine how much of one’s appetite for aesthetic autonomy turns into mere appetite for political autonomy, and thus for dissent and dissidence. Both examples chosen for illustration brought me to the conclusion that prior literary habits and practices into a politician’s public career can determine his/her ways of legitimizing party-switches or volatile doctrinarian attitudes. (shrink)

From Gnỗthi seautόn (‘Know Thyself’) to cognitive theories of the self there has been a long time, but the paradigm has almost remained the same. This article proposes a reconsideration of their rediscovery filtered through Jean Rhys’ post-colonial sensitivity. Between the ‘core self’ and its iridescent, exotic edges, broadly speaking, the thoroughly analyzed facets of cultural identity interpose.