Wojciech Sawala

Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector (eBook, ePUB)

Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This book explores the fictional work of Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), the eminent twentieth-century Brazilian writer. It employs the theoretical framework of "affirmative biopolitics" by Roberto Esposito, engaging with Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, alongside voices like Mircea Eliade, Anthony Giddens, and Agata Bielik-Robson. The focus is on rethinking and valuing "impersonality," crucial for understanding the anthropological, metaphysical, ethical, and political implications in Lispector's works. The main thesis posits that Lispector's writings, from journalistic chronicles to significant books like The Passion According to G.H., present a complex anthropological vision marked by an ontological and ethical "deadlock" between personality and impersonality. This vision suggests that humans are trapped in a personal mode of existence, separated from their ontological essence, leading to a metaphysical guilt. The book analyzes this deadlock both in individual and communal-political contexts, highlighting the cryptotheological dimension in Lispector's mystical and messianic themes rooted in Jewish tradition.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 228
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. September 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781040429266
• Artikelnr.: 75079062

Autorenporträt

Wojciech Sawala is an assistant professor in the Department of Portuguese at Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland. Comparatist and Latin Americanist, he specializes in the continent's twentieth-century narrative classics, including Borges, Cortázar, Lispector, and Guimarães Rosa. His research interests include biopolitics, postsecularism and Jewish messianism.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Constructing/Dismantling Personhood
Humanity as a Dispositif
"Human Setup": On the History of the Notion of a Person
Persona as Human's Ontological Status
Beyond the Dispositif of a Person: What Remains
Ethics of Impersonality
Chapter 2. Depersonalizations: Modernism and Jewish Tradition
Modernist Depersonalizations
Fernando Pessoa: Depersonalization and Abulia
Hermann Hesse: Through Multiplicity Toward Unity
Impersonality in Brazilian Modernism
Clarice Lispector: A Writer, a Mystic, a Messianist
Chapter 3. Dialectics of Personhood: Infancy and Puberty
Telephone as a Synecdoche of the Dispositif
A Person as a Dispositif: Humanization as Banishment from Being
Human Life as a Dialectic of Personalization and Depersonalization
Fetal and Infant Life as an Impersonal State
Domestication of Child, Animal, and God
Maturing as the Emergence of a Person from an Impersonal Background
Chapter 4. Crisis of Personhood: Horror and Ecstasy
Home and Ontological Security
The Vegetal Space of Impersonality
Freedom and Beauty
The Horror of Impersonality: Lispector and the "Heart of Darkness"
The Ascetic-Mystical Experience: From "the Self" Toward Nothingness
Layers and Seduction
Biological Life as an Object of Disgust
Chapter 5. Impersonalist Ethics: Toward Solidarity with the Bare Life
The Political Dimension of the Bare Life
Encounter with the Cockroach: Approaching the Bare Life
Literary Study of Conditions for "Affirmative Biopolitics"
Messianic Coda: "We shall be inhuman..."
Bibliography
Index