The Emergence of Literature is an extension and reworking of a series of significant propositions in philosophy and literary theory: Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's examination of the concept of the literary absolute; Martin Heidegger's destruction and Giorgio Agamben's archaeology of the metaphysics of will; Maurice Blanchot's delimitation of the space of literature; and Michel Foucault's archaeology of literature. Its core contribution to the history of theory is to understand the literary absolute not simply as philosophical concept, but as a paradigm that delimits the horizon for currents of literary theory through the course of the 20th century where the literary criteria change from the theme of sincerity to the theme of the death of the author. Stretching from Kant to Hegel, from Hoelderlin to the Early German Romantics, from John Stuart Mill to New Criticism, from Benjamin to Barthes, The Emergence of Literature examines the relation between continental philosophy and literature in the post-Kantian era.
Author(s): Jacob Bittner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 256
Tags: Literary Criticism, Critical Thinking, Literary Theory, Modern Literary Theory
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Text
Abbreviations
Introduction: Writerly Necessity
Part One The Emergence of Literature as Absolute
1 Literature as Pure Writing
Literature: A “Solution” to a Kantian Problem
The Pure Philosophical Writing: Hegel’s Absolute Subject
2 The Literary Absolute
A Philosophical Study of Literature
The Method of The Literary Absolute I
The Method of The Literary Absolute II
Fragmentation: The Operation of The Literary Absolute
Witz: The Question of the Interruption I
The Question of the Subject
The Fragmentary Will
Unworking: The Question of the Interruption II
Hölderlin and the Literary Absolute
3 The Born Poet
The Emergence of the Subject Who Cannot Not-Write
The Subject Who Cannot Not-Write Intransitively
The Problem of Pure Writing in Hölderlin’s Theoretical Texts
“The Question of Literature”
Hölderlin and the Romantics
Threshold
Part two The Paradigm of Writerly Necessity
4 Between the Subject and Language
Hölderlin in Foucault’s Early Thought
Literature: The Subject and Language
Literature: The Thought of Contingency
Literature as Counter-Discourse: Between the Subject and Language
The Absence of Work: Literature and Madness
Foucault and Blanchot: Literature, Madness, and the Outside
5 The Paradigm of Writerly Necessity
The Subjectivation of the Literary Absolute
The Enunciative Positions of Writerly Necessity
Double Negativity
6 The Writer Who Cannot Not-Desire to Write
The Desiring Subject
Double Negativity
The Subject and the Work
The Incessant Dying: The Neurotic Subject
One Lack Visible: The Perverse Subject
The Double Lack Visible: Between Madness and Contingency
Threshold
Part three Literary Criticism
7 The Author (Sincerity)
Sincerity: The Primary Criterion of Literature in the Nineteenth Century
New Criticism: The Transposition of the Criterion of Sincerity
8 The Death of the Author (Intransitivity)
From Sincerity to Intransitivity
The Question of the Author’s Death
Life without Negation
9 The Politics of a priori Poetry
The Poetized: Life and Literature
The Question of a priori Poetry
Threshold
Part four Aesthetics
10 Literature in the Age of Criticism
Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Romantic Form without Content
The Subject Positions of Art
The Romantic Genius
11 The Critic
The Destruction of Aesthetics
Art: The Interruption and the Form without Content
The Critic
Literature as Criticism
12 To Write as an Intransitive Verb
The Sincere Critic
The Will to Write
Intransitive Writing
The Amateur
The Pure Potentiality of Writing
Threshold
Afterthought on Literary Inoperativity
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
