The Claims of Literature: A Shoshana Felman Reader First Edition

The work of Shoshana Felman, now Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University and formerly Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale, has been at the center of some of the most exciting developments in the humanities over the course of the past thirty-plus years. Occupying an unprecedentedly influential position at the intersection of the fields of literary criticism, philosophy (in both its `Continental' and -- as her celebrated engagement with J.L. Austin's theory of Speech Acts in `The Scandal of the Speaking Body' demonstrated -- Analytic flavors), psychoanalysis, feminist thought, and, most recently, theories of legal procedure, history, and trauma, Shoshana Felman has delivered her own unique and revolutionary insights on pressing questions that should interest not only fellow academics and their students, but also readers looking to understand how `theory', done with a finesse only she can manage, can shed light on the nature of texts, psyches, history, and our world at large. Now, for the first time, `The Claims of Literature' makes available to a broad audience access to the full scope of Felman's thought, and showcases the development of her remarkable project from her early studies in France to her writings in the New Haven of the Yale School and beyond.`The Claims of Literature', edited by Emily Sun, Eyal Peretz, and Ulrich Baer, boasts a comprehensive selection of Felman's writings. Encompassing over thirty years of writing, including until-now-unavailable-in-English material, `The Claims of Literature', covers all the bases and more besides. `Claims' includes not only hefty selections from the controversial and path-breaking `The Scandal of the Speaking Body' (a brilliant, playful critique of J.L. Austin drawing on the figure of Don Juan the seducer) and her rigorous reflections on psychoanalytic theory proper (`Beyond Oedipus: The Specimen Text of Psychoanalysis'), but also presents gems like the early `You Were Right to Leave, Arthur Rimbaud' and `Rimbaud with Mallarme: Modernity, Poetry, and Translation' (translated by none other than Barbara Johnson) and a brief-yet-nuanced reading of Derrida and Foucault's respective writings on madness and its place in philosophy (can there be a philosophy of madness, or does madness itself imbricate the project of philosophy?, wonders Felman). `Claims' offers a representative catalogue of the readings of masterpieces of French and other literatures that first made Felman famous, and which still stand as definitive - her readings of Balzac, Flaubert, and James are all here. Sun, Peretz, and Baer have also worked to include well-chosen moments in Dr. Felman's work which will prove of particular interest to those interested in Jewish/Holocaust studies, feminism, and more: Felman's seminal reading of Claude Lanzmann's film `Shoah' is reproduced in its entirety, and her critique of Juliet Mitchell's feminist reading of Freud is here as well. The most recent direction Felman's thought - on the nature of trauma, and on the `crisis of witnessing' that historical events provoke, particularly when quickened through the testimony at trials which the law demands - is likewise presented here in full-force. Indeed, Felman's recent work on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, `A Ghost in the House of Justice', drawing in equal parts on the testimony of the Holocaust-survivor and author K-Zetnik and on the very different reportage of Hannah Arendt, takes up a place of emphasis in `Claims', and is a work which, as commentator Austin Sarat notes, also offers much food-for-thought for students, practitioners, and theorists of legal studies and the law.Felman's voice, and those of the texts, authors, and witnesses she examines are not the only ones heard in `Claims': the volume is replete with the commentary, introductions, and reflections of Felman's peers, all of whom boast impressive names in their own rights. In addition to Sun-Peretz-Baer's lucid introduction, Stanley Cavell, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Juliet Mitchell, some of whom write commissioned for this volume, all offer responses to Felman' thought, and testify to the unique influence she and her work have had on the development of their own work. These essays, which fuse reflection on Felman's claims with serious critical dialogue, offer the reader an effective representation of the breadth of Felman's influence.Pedagogy is at the heart of Shoshana Felman's enterprise, and `The Claims of Literature' makes this clear through more than simply showcasing her excellent written style (which is itself nothing to trifle with - some essays, particularly the one on Flaubert, are positively moving). Indeed, `Claims' closes with two, brand-new transcripts of classes given by Felman - one, her last at Yale, and the other, her first at Emory - which make abundantly clear the depth of her commitment to generating insight in others (students as well as readers) and her uniquely dialogical methodology. Moving from the details of Socrates' death to the respective `excommunications' of Spinoza and Lacan (for the latter of whom, I would argue, Felman is inarguably among the best, if not the best, readers alive today), these lecture transcripts s offer tantalizing insight into Felman's classroom methodology, and offer clues as to the new directions her work may take in the future.`The Claims of Literature' is a volume that, once read, by necessity alters any readings that follow it. As this volume so effectively makes clear, Felman's oeuvre represents far more than a collection of brilliant readings of individual texts - it is a sustained and elegant ethics of inquiry, a lifetime's fidelity to approaching fundamental questions with a focus both rigorous and graceful, critical yet sensitive, high-stakes yet deeply dignified. "The Claims of Literature" is, simply put, a lesson in reading, and anyone who feels drawn by the claims literature makes on us will be deeply enriched by it.