The Vocation of Writing

Marc Crépon, Tyler M. Williams, D. J. S. Cross

Description

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.
Translators’ Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Practices of Language and Experience of Violence

1. Self-Knowledge (A Reading of Kafka’s Diaries)

2. Impossible Anamnesis (Kafka and Derrida)

3. Shares of Singularity (Celan-Derrida)

4. On a Constellation (Levinas, Derrida, Blanchot, Readers of Celan)

5. “that tumor in the memory” (Levinas)

6. On Shame (Levinas)

7. A “balancing pole” over the Abyss (Victor Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich)

8. Duped by Violence? (A Reading of Sartre)

9. “the spirit of storytelling” (A Reading of Kertész)

10. “Surviving”: The Novel (A Reading of Kertész’s Galley Boat-Log)

11. “a profound feeling of protest” (A Reading of Singer)

12. “And nobody here knows who I am” (Emigrant Voices: Arendt, Sebald, Perec)

13. On Fear of Dying (Three Russian Stories)

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Ethique et morale

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438469621
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Vocation of Writing
SERIES EDITORS
David E. Johnson (Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo)
Scott Michaelsen (English, Michigan State University)
SERIES ADVISORY BOARD
Nahum D. Chandler, African American Studies, University of California, Irvine
Rebecca Comay, Philosophy and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Marc Crépon, Philosophy, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
Jonathan Culler, Comparative Literature, Cornell University
Johanna Drucker, Design Media Arts and Information Studies, UCLA
Christopher Fynsk, Modern Thought, Aberdeen University
Rodolphe Gasché, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
Martin Hägglund, Comparative Literature, Yale University
Carol Jacobs, Comparative Literature and German, Yale University
Peggy Kamuf, French and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California
David Marriott, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
Steven Miller, English, University at Buffalo
Alberto Moreiras, Hispanic Studies, Texas A M University
Patrick O’Donnell, English, Michigan State University
Pablo Oyarzún, Teoría del Arte, Universidad de Chile
Scott Cutler Shershow, English, University of California, Davis
Henry Sussman, German and Comparative Literature, Yale University
Samuel Weber, Comparative Literature, Northwestern University
Ewa Ziarek, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
The Vocation of Writing
Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence
Marc Crépon
Translated by D. J. S. Cross and Tyler M. Williams
Originally published as La Vocation de l’écriture. La littérature et la philosophie à l’épreuve de la violence
© Odile Jacob, 2014
Translation copyright © 2018 by the State University of New York
Cet ouvrage, publié dans le cadre d’un programme d’aide à la publication, bénéficie du soutien de la Mission Culturelle et Universitaire Française aux Etats-Unis, service de l’ambassade de France aux EU.
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the Mission Culturelle et Universitaire Française aux Etats-Unis, a department of the French Embassy in the United States.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Crépon, M. (Marc), 1962– author. | Cross, Donald J. S., translator. | Williams, Tyler M., translator.
Title: The vocation of writing : literature, philosophy, and the test of violence / Marc Crépon ; translated by Donald. J. S. Cross and Tyler M. Williams.
Other titles: La vocation de l’écriture. English
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, [2018] | Series: Suny series, literature … in theory | Originally published: La vocation de l’écriture. Paris : Odile Jacob, 2014. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017027467 (print) | LCCN 2018002577 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438469621 (e-book) | ISBN 9781438469614 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Violence—Philosophy. | Violence in literature. | Literature, Modern—20th century—Themes, motives. | Language and languages—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC B105.V5 (ebook) | LCC B105.V5 C7513 2018 (print) | DDC 303.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027467
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Contents

Translators’ Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Practices of Language and Experience of Violence
1. Self-Knowledge (A Reading of Kafka’s Diaries )
2. Impossible Anamnesis (Kafka and Derrida)
3. Shares of Singularity (Celan-Derrida)
4. On a Constellation (Levinas, Derrida, Blanchot, Readers of Celan)
5. “that tumor in the memory” (Levinas)
6. On Shame (Levinas)
7. A “balancing pole” over the Abyss (Victor Klemperer and the Language of the Third Reich)
8. Duped by Violence? (A Reading of Sartre)
9. “the spirit of storytelling” (A Reading of Kertész)
10. “Surviving”: The Novel (A Reading of Kertész’s Galley Boat-Log )
11. “a profound feeling of protest” (A Reading of Singer)
12. “And nobody here knows who I am” (Emigrant Voices: Arendt, Sebald, Perec)
13. On Fear of Dying (Three Russian Stories)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Translators’ Note

One of the most difficult decisions in translating La Vocation de l’écriture. La littérature et la philosophie à l’épreuve de la violence was, in fact, one of the first. The term épreuve has no strict equivalent in English. In La philosophie face à la violence ( Philosophy in the Face of Violence , co-authored with Frédéric Worms and published in 2015), Crépon explains the word’s etymological and political legacy as follows:
As literature in the Middle Ages attests, the term épreuve is from its first uses synonymous with suffering, misfortune, and adversity. In feudal law, the judicial épreuve signified the suffering—if not the torture—to which the accused were submitted, while God was called upon to intervene in order to designate the guilty. Only those who survived this épreuve could be declared innocent. But the term épreuve very quickly came to designate in addition that which allows judgment on the value of an individual or an idea. And from there a whole series of expressions arise: “to put the to test [ mettre à l’épreuve ],” “to be tested [ être à l’épreuve ].” All these locutions gesture in common toward a double signification: an evaluation and a resistance simultaneously. To be put to the test is to bend to the ritual of a judgment and the accompanying verdict, with the idea that this judgment and verdict are a function of resistance—as one says of material that resists cold, heat, and jolts that make it tremble. (18–19, translation ours)
Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence. Though far from the only possibility, we have decided to translate épreuve as “test” because, while its academic sense might be stronger in English (although not absent in French, as in une épreuve orale or une épreuve écrite ), the term’s other connotations best capture the flexibility of the French. Insofar as something “put to the test” is assessed, judged on the basis of its limit, “test” retains the juridical implications, the affective connotations, and the defensive posture of épreuve . Other options—such as “challenge,” “trial,” “tribulation,” “ordeal,” “proof,” etc.—might capture one sense of the term but always at the expense of eliminating or introducing others. “Challenge,” for instance, seems too agonistic to reflect the affective connotations, and “trial” risks subordinating the whole semantic spread to juridical implications.
While we found “test” best suited for the book’s title, however, épreuve remains syntactically flexible in ways inaccessible to it. Our decision to treat the “test” as a third term in a series— Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence —is a case in point. Although our English version risks losing a clear indication of the relation between literature, philosophy, and the test, the cumbersomeness of a literal translation leaves little alternative: literature and philosophy put to the test of violence. Readers should thus remain cognizant that, although the English title does not directly indicate it as such, the French title makes clear that the titular test of violence constitutes—tests the limits of—the instances of literature and philosophy treated in the pages that follow.
Finally, for the same reason, we have chosen not to standardize the translation of épreuve throughout the book. Elsewhere, befitting the context, épreuve is indeed translated as “ordeal,” “tribulation,” etc. Wherever these alternative translations risk confusion or bear directly upon the title of the book, we have glossed the word in editorial brackets.
Acknowledgments

Reading and writing owe much to friendship’s sharing. The majority of the chapters that comprise this book were written (and occasionally published), in much earlier versions, at the behest of invitations from dear friends. I thank them all, and this book is dedicated to them: Paul Audi, Christophe Bouton, Barbara Cassin, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Catherine Coquio, Vincent Delecroix, Michel Espagne, Marc de Launay, Jean-Claude Monod, Florence Noiville, Perrine Simon-Nahum, Frédéric Worms.
Introduction
Practices of Language and Experience of Violence

I. Education
T he storm rages between the kitchen walls. The child, accustomed to it, crossed the hall upon returning from school, climbed the stairs in silence, and locked himself in his room, which lets onto the courtyard shaded by the chestnut tree. He knows that the lightning-sharp phrases, thunderous reproaches, and hurtful recriminations will join him before long. He knows all about the flaring tempers, the mood swings, the unjustified anger that give language the strange power of becoming a weapon of intimate destruction. He is used to the cries, the outbursts, the irrevocable judgments, the definitive verdicts that transform affection into a tribunal and break what little confidence he might have kept in his ability to divert the furious lightning with everyday words. He has experienced it many times: everything that he might say in his defense is capable of being turned against him; there is no argument that holds when a loving word from which he would expect help and protection blows, on the contrary, a tempestuous wind. At that moment, his own words—hardly heard, hardly un