Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime

Andrew SLADE, Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime, Oxford / Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Francfort-sur-le-Main /  New York / Vienne, Peter Lang (Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures), 2007, 136 p.
ISBN 978-0-8204-7862-3


SUMMARY

This daring work argues that the traumas of the twentieth century form the backdrop of a subjectivity marked by the drive for survival, and that sublime figurations are the aesthetic marker of that drive. Hence, the works of Jean François Lyotard, Samuel Beckett, and Marguerite Duras can be understood only with reference to the postmodern conception of the sublime. The sublime becomes a central modality for bearing witness to the terrors of history and to the possibilities of writing in their wake. This book will be of special value to those concerned with aesthetic and literary theory, trauma theory, and postmodernism.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Slade earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook after studying philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He has written articles on the theory of tragedy, the sublime, and postmodernism.