Decreation and the Ethical Bind : : Simone Weil and the Claim of the Other / / Yoon Sook Cha.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Cha, Yoon Sook,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- 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