Overview
- Offers an original contribution to the fields of 20th century philosophy, literature, and French studies
- Investigates the centrality of death in our sense of human existence
- Explores the works of the most creative authors of modern French thought, including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book analyses a cultural phenomenon that goes to the very roots of Western civilization: the centrality of death in our sense of human existence. It does so through a close reading of seminal works by the most creative authors of modern French thought, such as Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida. These works encode an entire ethics of postmodernism. Betty Rojtman offers the reader a prism through which to see anew the key issues of the twentieth century: tragedy, finitude, nothingness—but also contestation, liberty, and sovereignty. Little by little we understand that this fascination with death may be just the other side of humankind’s great protest, its thirst for the infinite and its desire to be. Finally, Rojtman tries to offer another view on these fundamental questions by shifting to a parallel cultural reference: Kabbalah.
Reviews
“A grande dame of contemporary literature and Jewish studies. ... A brilliant work that offers an original thesis on the fascination with death in contemporary writing.”
—Elodie Maurot, La Croix
“This astute reader, with her often flamboyant style, is back with this profoundly original essay. It makes us eager for more.”
—Roger-Pol Droit, Le Monde
“A sort of tragedy in five acts, in which we go forward inexorably … toward an unknown abyss.”
—Jacques Le Brun, Carnets - École de psychanalyse Sigmund Freud
“A captivating essay, remarkable for the finesse and the precision of its analyses but also for its style.”
—Françoise Dastur, La Revue Philosophique de Louvain
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Betty Rojtman is Professor Emerita at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she chaired the French Studies Department and held the Katherine Cornell Chair in Comparative Literature. Her publications include Feu noir sur Feu blanc (1986), Le Pardon à la lune (2001), Une rencontre improbable (2002).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought
Book Subtitle: A Longing for the Abyss
Authors: Betty Rojtman
Translated by: Bartholomew Begley
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47322-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-47321-1Published: 13 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-47322-8Published: 12 August 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 145
Topics: Philosophy of Man, European Literature, Psychoanalysis