Decreation and the Ethical Bind

Decreation and the Ethical Bind

Simone Weil and the Claim of the Other

  • Auteur: Cha, Yoon Sook
  • Éditeur: Fordham University Press
  • ISBN: 9780823275250
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780823275281
  • eISBN Epub: 9780823275274
  • Lieu de publication:  New York , United States
  • Année de publication: 2017
  • Année de publication électronique: 2017
  • Mois : Juin
  • Langue: Anglais

In Simone Weil’s philosophical and literary work, obligation emerges at the conjuncture of competing claims: the other’s self-affirmation and one’s own dislocation; what one has and what one has to give; a demand that asks for too much and the extraordinary demand implied by asking nothing. The other’s claims upon the self—which induce unfinished obligation, unmet sleep, hunger—drive the tensions that sustain the scene of ethical relationality at the heart of this book.

Decreation and the Ethical Bind is a study in decreative ethics in which self-dispossession conditions responsiveness to a demand to preserve the other from harm. In examining themes of obligation, vulnerability, and the force of weak speech that run from Levinas to Butler, the book situates Weil within a continental tradition of literary theory in which writing and speech articulate ethical appeal and the vexations of response. It elaborates a form of ethics that is not grounded in subjective agency and narrative coherence but one that is inscribed at the site of the self’s depersonalization.

  • Cover
  • Decreation and the Ethical Bind
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • CONTENTS
  • Note on Abbreviations and Translations Used
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Vulnerability of Precious Things: “La Personne et le sacré”
  • 2. Uncommon Measure: “L’Iliade ou le poème de la force”
  • 3. Stillness and the Bond of Love: Venise sauvée
  • 4. Unfinished Obligation: Venise sauvée and La Folie du jour
  • 5. The Extravagant Demand of Asking Nothing: Destitution and Generosity in “Autobiographie spirituelle” and La Connaissance surnaturelle
  • 6. Empty Petitions: The Last Letters of Simone Weil
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index

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