Vigilant Memory
Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death
Published on 27. October 2006
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-0-8018-8311-8 (ISBN)
Description
Vigilant Memory focuses on the particular role of Emmanuel Levinas's thought in reasserting the ethical parameters for poststructuralist criticism in the aftermath of the Holocaust. More than simply situating Levinas's ethics within the larger context of his philosophy, R. Clifton Spargo offers a new explanation of its significance in relation to history. In critical readings of the limits and also the heretofore untapped possibilities of Levinasian ethics, Spargo explores the impact of the Holocaust on Levinas's various figures of injustice while examining the place of mourning, the bad conscience, the victim, and the stranger/neighbor as they appear in Levinas's work. Ultimately, Spargo ranges beyond Levinas's explicit philosophical or implicit political positions to calculate the necessary function of the "memory of injustice" in our cultural and political discourses on the characteristics of a just society. In this original and magisterial study, Spargo uses Levinas's work to approach our understanding of the suffering and death of others, and in doing so reintroduces an essential ethical element to the reading of literature, culture, and everyday life.
Reviews / Votes
A marvelously lucid and interesting analysis of Levinas's notion of 'after Auschwitz.' Contemporary Literature 2006 This book provides an immensely engaging, rich, and contemporary analysis of Levinas's ethics. -- Gregor Schnuer Substance Unique and indispensable for anyone engaged in scholarly treatments of ethics and politics. -- Claire Katz Shofar 2008 An impressively well-documented, well-researched study. -- Megan Craig Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature 2008More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-8311-8 (9780801883118)
DOI
10.1353/book.3233
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2006
Johns Hopkins University Press
€47.49
Available for download
Person
R. Clifton Spargo is an associate professor of English at Marquette University. He is the author of The Ethics of Mourning: Grief and Responsibility in Elegiac Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
Content
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Re-Theorizing Ethics
The Language of the Other
Ethics as Critique
Post-1945 Memory
1. Ethics as Unquieted Memory
Facing Death
Mourning the Other Who Dies
To Whom Do Our Funerary Emotions Refer?
Reading Grief's Excess in the Phaedo
The Death of Every Other
The Universal Relevance of the Unjust Death
The Holocaust-Not Just Anybody's Injustice
2. The Unpleasure of Conscience
Is Sorry Really the Hardest Word?
Unpleasure, Revisited
The Bad Conscience in History
The Bad Conscience and the Holocaust
Coda
3. Where There Are No Victorious Victims
Accountability in the Name of the Victim
Not Just Any Victim
Levinas and the Question of Victim-Subjectivity
Just Who Substitutes for Another?
Victim of Circumstances
Questionably Useful Suffering
4. Of the Others Who Are Stranger than Neighbors
The Stranger, Metaphorically Speaking
The Memory of the Stranger
Somebody's Knocking at the Door . . .
Lest We Forget-the Neighbor
The Community of Neighbors-Is It a Good Thing?
How Well Do I Know My Neighbor? The Exigency of Israel and the Holocaust
Afterword. Ethics versus History: Is There Still an Ought in Our Remembrance?
The Memory of Injustice
Nobody Has to Remember
Why Should I Care?
Notes
Index
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Re-Theorizing Ethics
The Language of the Other
Ethics as Critique
Post-1945 Memory
1. Ethics as Unquieted Memory
Facing Death
Mourning the Other Who Dies
To Whom Do Our Funerary Emotions Refer?
Reading Grief's Excess in the Phaedo
The Death of Every Other
The Universal Relevance of the Unjust Death
The Holocaust-Not Just Anybody's Injustice
2. The Unpleasure of Conscience
Is Sorry Really the Hardest Word?
Unpleasure, Revisited
The Bad Conscience in History
The Bad Conscience and the Holocaust
Coda
3. Where There Are No Victorious Victims
Accountability in the Name of the Victim
Not Just Any Victim
Levinas and the Question of Victim-Subjectivity
Just Who Substitutes for Another?
Victim of Circumstances
Questionably Useful Suffering
4. Of the Others Who Are Stranger than Neighbors
The Stranger, Metaphorically Speaking
The Memory of the Stranger
Somebody's Knocking at the Door . . .
Lest We Forget-the Neighbor
The Community of Neighbors-Is It a Good Thing?
How Well Do I Know My Neighbor? The Exigency of Israel and the Holocaust
Afterword. Ethics versus History: Is There Still an Ought in Our Remembrance?
The Memory of Injustice
Nobody Has to Remember
Why Should I Care?
Notes
Index