The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence (SUNY series, Literature . . . in Theory)

Within the violence our societies must confront today exists a dimension proper to language. Anyone who has been through the educational system, for example, recognizes how language not only shapes and models us, but also imposes itself upon us. During the twentieth century, this system revealed how language can condemn one to a certain death. In The Vocation of Writing , philosopher Marc Crépon explores this dimension of language, convinced that the node of all violence pertains first to language and how we make use of it. Crépon focuses on Kafka, Levinas, Singer, and Derrida, not only because each rose against commandeering language in order to warn against the next massacres, but also because their work affirms the vocation of writing—that which makes literature and philosophy the final weapon for unmasking the violence and hatred that language bears at its heart. To affirm the vocation of writing is to turn language against itself, to defuse its murderous potentialities by opening it toward exchange, responsibility, and humanity when the latter fixes the other and the world as its goals. Contents 6 Translators’ Note 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Practices of Language and Experience of Violence 12 I. Education 12 II. Inheritances 13 III. Discriminations 14 IV. Political Awakening 16 V. Preoccupat ion 17 VI. Love and Friendship 18 VII. Aggression 20 VIII. The Shoah 21 IX. Books 22 X. Literature and Phi losophy 24 XI. Corpus 26 1. Self-Knowledge (A Reading of Kafka’s Diaries) 28 I. Impossible Sel f-Knowledge 30 II. The Tribunal of Writ ing 39 2. Impossible Anamnesis (Kafka and Derrida) 48 I. 50 II. 54 3. Shares of Singularity (Celan-Derrida) 62 I. The Singularity of Dates 63 II. The Time of the Other 67 III. Circumcision of the Word 72 4. On a Constellation (Levinas, Derrida, Blanchot, Readers of Celan) 76 I. 77 II. 79 III. 81 IV. 85 V. 88 5. “that tumor in the memory” (Levinas) 92 I. 95 II. 97 III. 99 6. On Shame (Levinas) 102 I. 102 II. 104 III. 108 7. A “balancing pole” over the Abyss (Victor Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich) 112 I. 113 II. 115 III. 117 IV. 121 8. Duped by Violence? (A Reading of Sartre) 124 I. 124 II. 126 III. 129 IV. 132 9. “the spirit of storytelling” (A Reading of Kertész) 136 I. 138 II. 142 III. 144 10. “Surviving”: The Novel (A Reading of Kertész’s Galley Boat-Log) 148 I. 148 II. 151 III. 153 IV. 154 V. 157 11. “a profound feeling of protest” (A Reading of Singer) 160 I. 161 II. 163 III. 165 12. “And nobody here knows who I am” (Emigrant Voices: Arendt, Sebald, Perec) 168 I. 170 II. 172 III. 174 13. On Fear of Dying (Three Russian Stories) 180 I. 182 II. 185 III. 188 Notes 194 Bibliography 204 Index 208