Meta tags:

Headings (most frequently used words):

2011, the, of, and, monday, 11, friday, in, 24, thursday, january, me, blog, subscribe, to, ethics, post, face, dreaming, without, memory, strangled, sleep, tuesday, november, 08, october, 03, september, 12, august, 22, sunday, july, saturday, june, may, 27, march, 25, february, 20, 14, about, archive, places, visit, followers, search, this, dropping, olocaust, bomb, comedy, reading, for, wound, nothing, de, scribed, hitler, humor, love, other, origins, two, ways, splitting, fish, show, your, intimacy, language, jews, writers, on, impossibility, tragic, literature, world, awake, inside, dark, limmudla, conference,

Text of the page (most frequently used words):
the (332), and (152), that (81), this (52), but (52), what (46), for (43), not (38), share (37), they (32), are (31), was (31), with (29), our (29), one (28), know (25), about (24), from (23), have (23), you (22), when (22), can (21), 2011 (18), love (17), something (17), new (16), want (16), more (16), only (16), them (16), may (15), face (15), these (15), yet (15), don (15), their (15), all (14), monica (14), see (14), his (14), there (14), will (14), trauma (13), other (13), march (13), facebook (13), which (13), #language (12), january (12), pinterest (12), blogthis (12), email (12), posted (12), just (12), body (12), because (12), how (12), comments (11), two (11), august (11), february (11), dark (11), writer (11), even (11), come (11), april (10), september (10), november (10), nothing (10), never (10), its (10), into (10), now (10), both (9), inside (9), kind (9), than (9), also (9), find (9), out (9), world (9), has (9), always (9), another (9), boys (9), were (9), june (8), july (8), october (8), december (8), time (8), would (8), who (8), had (8), write (8), over (8), last (8), become (8), words (8), most (8), often (8), read (8), been (8), survivors (8), need (8), posts (7), thought (7), literature (7), post (7), fish (7), stories (7), between (7), perhaps (7), think (7), saw (7), might (7), then (7), really (7), feel (7), holocaust (7), through (7), everything (7), some (7), blog (6), being (6), jewish (6), hebrew (6), awake (6), impossibility (6), book (6), real (6), night (6), first (6), someone (6), open (6), own (6), form (6), course (6), must (6), people (6), things (6), before (6), like (6), children (6), cardozo (6), here (6), atom (5), american (5), ethics (5), intimacy (5), your (5), ways (5), origins (5), reading (5), wound (5), narratives (5), impulse (5), literary (5), same (5), comment (5), darkness (5), experience (5), around (5), bear (5), life (5), much (5), blanchot (5), did (5), yes (5), down (5), second (5), ethical (5), understanding (5), rhetoric (5), every (5), him (5), least (5), without (5), end (5), right (5), sorrow (5), part (5), themselves (5), let (5), story (5), say (5), good (5), year (5), disaster (5), tsa (5), levinas (4), conference (4), jews (4), writers (4), show (4), judaism (4), called (4), horror (4), give (4), work (4), today (4), enough (4), maurice (4), until (4), scream (4), says (4), fear (4), known (4), off (4), thinking (4), terror (4), call (4), space (4), context (4), mao (4), while (4), violence (4), political (4), violent (4), those (4), tell (4), way (4), day (4), process (4), ours (4), questions (4), man (4), self (4), back (4), knew (4), generation (4), capacity (4), said (4), split (4), told (4), talk (4), found (4), myself (4), moses (4), boston (4), refuse (4), scanner (4), articulate (4), subscribe (3), novel (3), limmudla (3), tragic (3), hitler (3), humor (3), dropping (3), olocaust (3), bomb (3), theory (3), books (3), wrote (3), mean (3), suspect (3), light (3), reality (3), cannot (3), after (3), place (3), seeing (3), less (3), daily (3), blood (3), given (3), get (3), against (3), deep (3), shape (3), felt (3), friday (3), excited (3), question (3), role (3), terrorism (3), discourse (3), why (3), delillo (3), particular (3), novelists (3), isn (3), different (3), project (3), era (3), wonder (3), collective (3), days (3), various (3), narrative (3), struggle (3), should (3), thou (3), writing (3), turn (3), once (3), long (3), speaks (3), desire (3), her (3), ideas (3), cutting (3), moments (3), creation (3), again (3), week (3), shul (3), chaos (3), look (3), able (3), recognize (3), taught (3), child (3), attempt (3), written (3), wrong (3), witness (3), father (3), thing (3), parents (3), claim (3), many (3), move (3), lab (3), dock (3), knowledge (3), processes (3), anything (3), stop (3), percy (3), exactly (3), each (3), poem (3), next (3), too (3), line (3), monday (3), memory (3), mourning (3), where (3), doesn (3), silence (3), remember (3), airport (3), forced (3), awareness (3), responsibility (3), comedy (3), dreaming (3), side (2), philosophy (2), apples (2), north (2), society (2), journal (2), places (2), splitting (2), scribed (2), former (2), school (2), adore (2), contemporary (2), republic (2), los (2), angeles (2), education (2), forward (2), does (2), sight (2), help (2), death (2), absence (2), special (2), vision (2), likely (2), imagine (2), existence (2), awoke (2), pool (2), live (2), daylight (2), particularly (2), idea (2), illuminates (2), phrase (2), bit (2), bed (2), realize (2), remnants (2), sometimes (2), verse (2), begins (2), favorite (2), terrain (2), importantly (2), such (2), art (2), dominated (2), degree (2), mass (2), represent (2), responses (2), film (2), changed (2), since (2), religious (2), etc (2), gave (2), address (2), began (2), phenomena (2), start (2), proposal (2), away (2), article (2), example (2), killed (2), finishing (2), voice (2), thursday (2), makes (2), instead (2), achieve (2), product (2), set (2), quotation (2), opened (2), use (2), becomes (2), somehow (2), takes (2), impossible (2), years (2), edmond (2), jabes (2), occasions (2), whom (2), else (2), knowing (2), page (2), talmud (2), beautiful (2), compelling (2), speak (2), original (2), stand (2), human (2), purpose (2), writes (2), hoping (2), potential (2), woman (2), country (2), true (2), others (2), allows (2), intimate (2), god (2), rupture (2), maybe (2), ever (2), siddur (2), emotionally (2), especially (2), recently (2), sounds (2), beginnings (2), breathe (2), havazelet (2), put (2), together (2), survivor (2), filling (2), incredible (2), issue (2), whether (2), position (2), mouths (2), identify (2), though (2), outside (2), war (2), scars (2), under (2), emotional (2), traumatized (2), events (2), rarely (2), remains (2), despise (2), act (2), saying (2), midrash (2), rather (2), grow (2), few (2), turned (2), making (2), status (2), living (2), forget (2), agamben (2), labels (2), shavuot (2), alasdair (2), macintyre (2), point (2), becoming (2), stone (2), replaced (2), certain (2), cut (2), argument (2), parts (2), possibility (2), data (2), ask (2), group (2), dead (2), having (2), entire (2), discover (2), went (2), hear (2), anyone (2), walker (2), tradition (2), however (2), lovers (2), along (2), rumi (2), simply (2), needs (2), somewhere (2), finally (2), regard (2), enriched (2), involved (2), return (2), reminded (2), heard (2), she (2), imagined (2), alicia (2), ostriker (2), still (2), looking (2), little (2), didn (2), future (2), sweetness (2), hope (2), could (2), going (2), submit (2), pat (2), discussed (2), trip (2), option (2), intrusive (2), well (2), fly (2), ground (2), possible (2), lapd (2), arrest (2), officers (2), screening (2), employees (2), exception (2), men (2), women (2), hateful (2), disturbed (2), treated (2), deeply (2), sense (2), aware (2), answers (2), strangled (2), sleep (2), skip (2), search, followers, effects, perverse, egalitarianism, wishydig, third, guy, ducks, celestial, soma, chair, rhetoricat, com, impermissible, mxrk, luke, ford, jewschool, media, links, jeffrey, goldberg, atlantic, fractal, ontology, fido, yak, comics, postcards, bedlam, detective, wearing, black, masks, jewcy, strangledsleep, twitter, osborne, visit, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, archive, view, complete, profile, storyteller, professor, ucla, pepperdine, lmu, purdue, expertise, representations, multi, ethnic, literatures, christianity, immigrant, critical, graduate, cornell, criticism, create, wine, traveling, shoes, midrashic, response, published, pieces, newsweek, review, chronicle, higher, studio, city, california, united, states, home, older, newer, register, event, object, illuminated, supposed, merge, realities, walk, interplay, counterpart, near, brushes, infinite, abraham, binding, son, isaac, site, moriah, pupils, dilated, suspend, disbelief, unwittingly, reveals, madness, differs, drastically, floor, incompatible, during, anchored, brilliantly, friends, quoted, 1968, sermon, king, stars, wandered, nighttime, bouts, frequently, breathed, echoing, shaking, pinned, flat, understood, close, unknown, tainted, contact, fingers, barely, missing, tracing, middle, pulling, center, head, leaning, magnet, warmth, songs, video, below, play, navigating, mapped, levinasian, necessary, whose, word, obligation, 201, important, spur, action, totality, infinity, hmph, later, clearly, impact, 157, highlights, anxieties, artist, novelist, spectacles, terrorists, gain, lose, character, influence, consciousness, extent, decline, shapers, sensibility, danger, equals, failure, dangerous, examines, non, representational, past, decade, period, seems, begun, forge, path, pervasiveness, discussions, colored, social, philosophical, catastrophes, senseless, brutalities, atrocities, threats, reflect, respond, care, looks, feels, plays, efforts, terms, procrastination, possibilities, presentation, trying, finished, blown, late, came, conversations, either, destruction, employs, online, charged, opponents, demolished, bill, crash, burn, projects, manuscript, woody, allen, prepping, german, cinema, creating, career, fond, incorporating, strange, voices, started, major, involves, midair, explosions, crumbled, buildings, beckett, reluctant, fearful, agonizing, friction, arrive, abandon, notions, myths, finality, keep, moving, great, cause, anxiety, assurance, liberated, sooner, longer, akin, class, semester, discernible, martin, buber, chafe, account, instances, chosen, select, 223, faced, paralyzes, thousand, racked, name, chooses, jew, survive, tonight, rainer, maria, rilke, pull, randomly, savor, sensation, wanting, detached, shameful, confession, carried, affair, persuasion, mysterious, intriguing, translations, transliterations, translation, ellipses, sake, financially, lucrative, immodest, naked, mere, eagerly, awaiting, electrical, charge, intellect, barreling, serves, utilitarian, means, clever, business, investors, finance, advance, lot, catchy, screenplay, materialize, theater, screens, across, serving, despite, illusion, dialogue, sharing, exchange, reward, striking, brilliant, intensity, ourselves, separates, putting, enmity, wild, waste, springs, root, conflict, linguistic, births, choose, transliterated, sound, evocative, brings, foundation, learning, thanks, gift, classes, local, institute, deny, brand, untranslated, lips, knowingly, breathtaking, materializes, letters, alphabet, david, grossman, ehud, perspective, exposed, terrible, proxy, secondhand, spent, gaps, elusive, parent, formidable, perpetually, unknowable, decide, unethical, levy, judgments, shortcomings, flailing, desperate, histories, belong, haunt, beginning, ash, done, caught, save, try, carry, traces, bury, strife, relics, sad, embrace, sadness, loves, protects, adores, lives, within, exists, chronological, grasp, continuous, lines, distinguish, endings, mobius, vietnam, fact, gruesome, battles, wounded, nearly, bears, break, weight, burden, quarter, transmission, couldn, similarities, understand, feeling, exhilarating, loved, shalt, kill, unread, painfully, necessarily, hidden, quite, tendency, artistically, intellectually, visible, imagining, cattle, cars, pretending, flesh, arms, tattooed, essentially, belongs, anyway, fashionable, preside, ownership, certainly, provide, commentary, biblical, showing, inadequacies, deepening, extending, ensures, relevance, simultaneously, relinquishing, take, relevant, novels, comprised, metaphorical, make, cases, entitlement, urge, deify, passing, alone, melvin, jules, bukiet, admit, racket, forging, identities, careers, based, shrinks, smaller, rise, stature, conceiving, repositories, authentic, died, drowned, primo, levi, giorgio, attest, compelled, bearing, image, above, jeanette, jobson, sun, ecclesiastes, sages, drew, philosopher, quote, top, argue, constantly, undo, worth, codification, reflects, ossification, learned, struggled, bless, jacob, hand, respect, intellectual, scientific, precedes, ingenuity, insight, miss, mustn, recklessly, recklessness, characterizes, impulses, tempted, method, mayhem, lies, peer, meaning, acquiring, vastly, crux, teaches, precedence, significant, recognizes, doing, value, necessity, varying, routes, eyes, behold, rent, prove, groups, biological, surely, differ, acquire, considered, picking, knife, readily, apt, lead, discovery, information, luxury, benefitting, precision, propriety, tested, disadvantage, seem, gathers, acting, merely, curiosity, contextualize, analogy, drawn, works, presumably, medical, spirit, synagogue, neighborhood, unfrozen, torah, rethinking, halacha, beliefs, surprised, modern, orthodox, lecture, asking, familiar, nodding, vigorously, tangential, nod, outwardly, remained, immovable, sensed, nobody, expressing, familiarity, 20th, century, southern, very, existentialist, christian, rabbi, nathan, lopes, virtue, order, partially, constituted, goods, pursuit, gives, saturday, exist, suppose, aspect, distressing, suggests, manner, fulfilling, reason, chilled, ceases, person, spin, lovely, promising, selfish, version, herself, idolize, meet, recognition, responding, already, allowing, deepened, cheryl, dumesnil, prefaced, discovered, ago, loving, distinct, narcissism, separating, functions, midrashically, extension, discrete, predecessor, trace, tried, listen, carefully, betrayed, tears, betrayals, sadnesses, ones, lodged, smallest, flicker, disappointments, haven, hurt, flashes, melancholy, harbored, sharpest, insights, caused, alive, unequivocally, lingering, sunday, reviewed, rudolph, herzog, funny, germany, italics, quotations, yehuda, amichai, respectively, rebuilt, building, happens, cherish, illuminate, amnesia, unruly, corpse, rest, proceed, backward, mumbling, kaddish, myth, resurrection, archetype, proves, adequate, among, twisted, paths, talking, gross, norman, finkelstein, weeds, mouth, believe, revealed, underestimated, alternatively, comfort, deception, earlier, latent, stage, borne, cease, favor, surface, tension, cup, trembling, reject, coherence, vain, scribing, emerge, disable, conceive, terrifies, lack, clutter, emptiness, remind, quietly, threatens, repeated, scribes, selves, news, egos, rubble, truth, forgotten, memories, mutilated, fancies, himself, any, tenth, anniversary, filled, empty, appearance, therapy, drag, earliest, hours, venture, seemed, culmination, pretend, commemorate, limit, rosh, hashanah, believed, happiness, inevitable, coming, calendar, unblemished, conjured, aspire, sweet, suddenly, sand, traveled, months, prepared, trouble, pass, legitimate, reasons, entries, month, metal, detector, opposed, recent, methods, honest, scope, wasn, travel, companion, agreed, polite, compassionate, refusals, adamant, details, blogpost, standoff, supervisor, multiple, members, small, victories, ultimately, devastated, ashamed, mostly, capitulate, allowed, disappointed, sit, leave, premises, allow, police, reluctantly, security, met, hostility, cruelty, somewhat, respectful, lacked, surprisingly, intelligent, staff, inhuman, fairly, average, attitude, individuals, encountered, sneering, uniforms, chills, equally, apathy, flanked, sides, travelers, mindlessly, walking, assuming, uniform, watched, horrified, scared, number, dipped, exotic, honey, sweeten, disposition, foreboding, ready, nonetheless, responsible, holds, hostage, community, experienced, painful, running, theories, answer, experiencing, described, existential, sorts, whole, liberation, occupied, state, convinced, actually, comfortable, reminds, namely, angrier, bible, angry, incidents, larger, citizens, undergo, invasive, procedures, animals, politely, request, alternative, continue, borrowed, geoffrey, hartman, enrique, dussel, tomorrow, salon, managed, transition, present, update, watch, bina, giving, tuesday, interval, waking, dreamer, sidebar, main,

Text of the page (random words):
macintyre after virtue on the first night of shavuot this week i went to a synagogue in my neighborhood to hear rabbi dr nathan lopes cardozo give a talk called the unfrozen torah rethinking halacha and religious beliefs i was more than surprised given that i was in a modern orthodox shul when he opened his lecture by asking if anyone was familiar with walker percy inside i was nodding vigorously excited by what would likely be the most tangential nod to the american literary world but outwardly i remained immovable having sensed that nobody around me was expressing familiarity with the 20th century american southern writer the very existentialist and christian writer walker percy cardozo went on to contextualize his entire talk in an analogy drawn by percy in one of his works one group of boys presumably in some kind of lab or medical school is told to cut into a fish to split it open and see what they find but they are also in the spirit of education told exactly what they will find and so they find of course nothing new another group of boys gathers together at the end of a dock they split open the body of a dead fish not having been told to do it but acting merely on impulse curiosity a desire to know they find an entire world they discover it for themselves both groups of boys split open the same fish so to speak they find for the most part the same biological phenomena and yet the ways they tell the story must surely differ the boys in the lab acquire data that was set in stone before they even considered picking up the knife to split the fish in two they are not so readily apt to ask the questions that might lead to the discovery of new information but the boys on the dock do not have the luxury of benefitting from the precision and propriety of data tested and true they also are at a disadvantage it would seem and yet their eyes behold the same vision the once living body rent in two turned inside out to prove its former capacity to breathe but the boys meaning making and knowledge acquiring processes are vastly different and here is the crux of cardozo s argument if there s anything that judaism teaches us it s that process takes precedence over product the parts that move are more significant than the parts that stop that stop us but more importantly at least for cardozo we need both processes judaism as it were recognizes and allows for the possibility of various processes different ways of doing things and so jews must recognize not just the value but also the necessity of these varying routes there is a certain recklessness perhaps that characterizes the impulses of the boys on the dock they are tempted here lies this body before you cut into it peer into it method is replaced by mayhem the boys in the lab on the other hand recognize and respect the intellectual and scientific work that precedes them one mustn t go cutting recklessly into fish ingenuity is replaced by insight of another these boys may miss what s new cardozo s second point drew on the philosopher alasdair macintyre see the quote at the top of this post we argue about what s good and we are good we are constantly in a process of becoming of becoming good some things should not be written in stone or we undo everything that makes them good worth writing down codification reflects our ossification some things need to be felt learned struggled through i will not let you go until you bless me jacob said yes there s nothing new under the sun says the writer of ecclesiastes but turn it and turn it the sages say this is how we move image above by jeanette jobson posted by monica at 12 36 am 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cardozo judaism shavuot friday may 27 2011 show me your face i taught ehud havazelet s bearing the body this week in my holocaust film and literature course and like last time i taught the novel i m compelled to write about it when i put this course together i knew that i would have to address the perspective of what we call the second generation survivor the child of a holocaust survivor exposed to the terrible trauma by proxy everything secondhand a life spent filling in the gaps in an attempt to know the elusive parent the formidable and perpetually unknowable havazelet is not a child of survivors but he has written an incredible novel that speaks to this experience i have to admit that over the last few years i have been turned off by the second generation racket people forging their identities and making their careers based on their status as children of survivors as the last generation of living holocaust survivors shrinks smaller many of their children rise in stature conceiving of themselves as the only repositories of the authentic story of the holocaust they forget that not even their parents can claim that status that that story died with the drowned as primo levi and giorgio agamben will both attest those children of survivors who write novels their work is so often comprised of one long metaphorical scream they make compelling cases for their entitlement urge us to deify them with the passing of their parents the story is ours and ours alone melvin jules bukiet a child of survivors has said but it is not he s wrong it belongs to no one perhaps and anyway since when did it become fashionable to preside over narratives claim ownership over them it certainly isn t a jewish impulse to own narratives yes jews love stories but the existence of midrash stories that provide commentary on biblical narratives showing us the inadequacies of the original stories deepening them filling them out and extending them in a way that ensures their relevance to a contemporary era illuminates the jewish capacity to own narratives while simultaneously relinquishing our right to them we would rather see them grow take shape become relevant in the context of now and yet i don t quite despise the tendency of some of the more artistically and intellectually visible second generation survivors to act out imagining themselves in cattle cars they never saw pretending the flesh of their arms is tattooed let me know what you know show me your face this is what they are essentially saying to their parents let me know what you know so that you can love me and i can love you let me see your face the face on which was written thou shalt not kill the face unread the face that remains painfully and necessarily hidden i in part understand this impulse the experience of feeling known by someone inside and out is exhilarating i have often been loved but rarely known my father was in the vietnam war in fact he was part of some of the most gruesome battles of that war he was wounded and nearly killed his body bears incredible scars but these scars break away from the body under the weight of the emotional burden this quarter as i taught about the transmission of trauma i couldn t help but think of the similarities between children of holocaust survivors and children of people traumatized by other events no it s not the same thing but there s something i will never know my father as much as i love and adore him and as much as he loves protects and adores me i will never know him he lives within the trauma though his body exists outside of its chronological grasp the inside continuous with the outside my father the mobius no lines to distinguish beginnings from endings these histories that don t belong to us they haunt us in the beginning but become ash in our mouths before the day is done he is caught and it is not for me to save him or try to identify with him i only bear witness carry traces i daily bear and bury the remnants of his strife the relics of his trauma and i realize today that if i am sad if i embrace the sadness of life it is because i want to share in his sorrow i want to know and so it is with the issue of children of survivors it is not for me to decide whether their position is right or wrong ethical or unethical it s not for me to levy judgments against their shortcomings their flailing about in a desperate attempt to know all i can do is bear witness posted by monica at 1 25 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday march 25 2011 the intimacy of language a shameful confession i have carried on a long time love affair with all things of the hebrew persuasion without really knowing the language a page of talmud is beautiful to me mysterious compelling intriguing and it speaks to me or at least my translations and transliterations speak to me read talmud to me perhaps that space between the original and the translation also speaks to me as ellipses often do but i ve recently been learning hebrew thanks to someone special who gave me a gift of hebrew classes at a local language institute and i can t deny that i feel a new brand of intimacy when i look at a siddur in shul or when i look at a page of untranslated david grossman as i feel my lips form knowingly around the sounds that become real words even if i don t yet know what all the words mean i can start to read them and it s a breathtaking intimacy that materializes even as one is in the beginnings of being able to recognize the letters of the hebrew alphabet and breathe sounds into them last week in shul maybe for the first time ever i did not choose the transliterated siddur there s something about the sound of the language s voice that is emotionally evocative it brings us back to the foundation of the world to its chaos and creation but especially to its chaos creation is violent god s words form a rupture that separates light from darkness cutting them off from one another putting enmity between them and the world is all wild and waste but this violence springs from language which is for me the root of intimacy conflict again it s an intimate kind of violence this linguistic rupture that births creation and isn t that what our words always do they are violent because they are self serving often cutting us off from others despite the illusion of dialogue the sharing and exchange of ideas is its own reward striking with brilliant intensity it allows us to experience intimate moments with ourselves but i don t think this is true for most people language for most people serves a utilitarian purpose it is a means to an end one man writes a clever business proposal hoping that potential investors will finance his project and so advance his lot in life one woman writes a catchy screenplay hoping to see her ideas materialize on theater screens across the country and then there are those who are immodest in the way they stand naked before mere words eagerly awaiting the electrical charge of idea and intellect to come barreling into human desire i don t imagine that my love for language for the sake of language will be financially lucrative but it s enough it s enough posted by monica at 2 14 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday february 24 2011 jews and writers on impossibility we often want something and more often at least for some of us we savor the sensation of wanting detached from knowing in other words we want something but we don t know what on these occasions there are two writers to whom i turn edmond jabes and rainer maria rilke every once in a while it will be something or someone else but most often it s one of these two i pull out a book and just open it randomly tonight edmond jabes s the book of questions is what i open i see faced with the impossibility of writing which paralyzes every writer and the impossibility of being jewish which has for two thousand years racked the people of that name the writer chooses to write and the jew to survive 223 in both instances it is impossibility that is chosen we select the impossible the thou must which takes no account of the thou can to use martin buber s words we chafe against what is not yet ours but in the struggle it becomes somehow ours yes it is perhaps discernible only in the struggle it s akin to the maurice blanchot quotation i opened my rhetoric class with last semester you can only become a writer you can never be one no sooner are you then you are no longer a writer it s only about process abandon notions of product and myths of finality just keep moving it should in theory give us great cause for anxiety what with the assurance that we will never achieve what we set out to and yet we are liberated don t be reluctant to struggle is what it makes me think and don t be fearful of agonizing over the friction fear instead the day you arrive or achieve posted by monica at 3 20 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday january 20 2011 ethics and the tragic face of literature in a post 9 11 world beckett is the last writer to shape the way we think and see after him the major work involves midair explosions and crumbled buildings this is the new tragic narrative don delillo mao ii in between various other projects finishing my book manuscript finishing a woody allen article prepping for my german cinema course creating my new voice over career oh come on those of you who know me know how fond i am of incorporating strange voices into every narrative i tell i ve started a new project that i m really excited about it s not a form of procrastination i had to start it because i was thinking through the possibilities for my presentation at the 2011 north american levinas society conference in may trying to write a proposal i had just finished reading don delillo s mao ii and was blown away i know i m a bit late on this one and it came to me that everything these days literature daily conversations political rhetoric is either about destruction and violence or it employs violent rhetoric i just saw an article online today for example about how political rhetoric in particular is charged with violent language political opponents are demolished a bill is killed crash and burn etc but what i really care about is literature how it looks and feels what role it plays in our efforts to come to terms with the world around us what i began to wonder is the new face of literature in an era dominated by senseless brutalities collective atrocities and threats of terrorism how has the face of literature changed both to reflect and respond to these phenomena this isn t so different from my book project which examines the role of non representational thinking in the context of responses literary and film to the holocaust but something in the past decade has changed in a post 9 11 period it seems that american novelists have begun to forge a path into new ethical terrain while it may be that the pervasiveness of discussions of violence and terror since 9 11 have colored all of our discourse social political philosophical religious etc it also might be that the catastrophes of 9 11 gave novelists a new language a rhetoric through which to address...