Möbian Nights: Reading Literature and Darkness (Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, 6)

"I died at Auschwitz," French writer Charlotte Delbo asserts, "and nobody knows it." Möbian Nights: Reading Literature and Darkness develops a new understanding of literary reading: that in the wake of disasters like the Holocaust, death remains a premise of our experience rather than a future. Challenging customary "aesthetic" assumptions that we write in order not to die, Sandor Goodhart suggests (with Kafka) we write to die. Drawing upon analyses developed by Girard, Foucault, Blanchot, and Levinas (along with examples from Homer to Beckett), Möbian Nights proposes that all literature works "autobiographically", which is to say, in the wake of disaster; with the credo "I died; therefore, I am"; and for which the language of topology (for example, the "Möbius strip") offers a vocabulary for naming the "deep structure" of such literary, critical, and scriptural sacrificial and anti-sacrificial dynamics. "Möbian Nights: Literary Reading in a Time of Crisis develops a new understanding of literary reading: that in the wake of disasters like the Holocaust, death remains a premise of our experience rather than a future. Challenging customary "aesthetic" assumptions that we write in order not to die, Sandor Goodhart suggests (with Kafka) we write to die. Drawing upon analyses developed by Girard, Foucault, Blanchot, and Levinas (along with examples from Homer to Beckett), Möbian Nights proposes that all literature works "autobiographically", which is to say, in the wake of disaster; with the credo "I died; therefore, I am"; and for which the language of topology (for example, the "Möbius strip") offers a vocabulary for naming the "deep structure" of such literary, critical, and scriptural sacrificial and anti-sacrificial dynamics."--Bloomsbury Publishing. "Utilizing insights drawn from mathematical topology, from French critical theory and literature, and from Holocaust studies, Sandor Goodhart articulates a new understanding of the relation of literary reading to disaster"--Bloomsbury Publishing. "Möbian Nights: Literary Reading in a Time of Crisis develops a new understanding of literary reading: that in the wake of disasters like the Holocaust, death remains a premise of our experience rather than a future. Challenging customary "aesthetic" assumptions that we write in order not to die, Sandor Goodhart suggests (with Kafka) we write to die. Drawing upon analyses developed by Girard, Foucault, Blanchot, and Levinas (along with examples from Homer to Beckett), Möbian Nights proposes that all literature works "autobiographically", which is to say, in the wake of disaster; with the credo "I died; therefore, I am"; and for which the language of topology (for example, the "Möbius strip") offers a vocabulary for naming the "deep structure" of such literary, critical, and scriptural sacrificial and anti-sacrificial dynamics."-- Provided by publisher FC 1 Half title 2 Violence, Desire, and the Sacred 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface and Acknowledgments 9 Introduction: Möbian Turns: Difference as Continuity 18 1 After The Tragic Vision: Krieger and Criticism, Lentricchia and Crisis 42 2 Disfiguring de Man: Literature, History, and Collaboration 62 3 Witnessing the Impossible: Laub, Felman, and the Testimony of Trauma 104 4 Documenting Fiction: Kolitz, van Beeck, Levinas, and Holocaust Witness 128 5 “And darkness upon the face of the deep”: Counter-Redemptive Hermeneutics in Wiesel, Mauriac, Blanchot, Levinas, and Genesis 1 152 6 “All the story of the night”: Criticism, Literature, and the Möbian 220 7 “I died in Auschwitz”: Literary Reading, the Möbian, and the Posthumous 280 Conclusion: Versions of Night: Reading Literature and Darkness 310 Works Cited 314 Index 336 "Utilizing insights drawn from mathematical topology, from French critical theory and literature, and from Holocaust studies, Sandor Goodhart articulates a new understanding of the relation of literary reading to disaster"-- Provided by publisher