Tom Bishop - Ways of Re-Thinking Literature

Ways of Re-Thinking Literature

Ways of Re-Thinking Literature creates a unique platform where leading literary thinkers and practitioners provide a multiplicity of views into what literature is today.

The texts gathered in this extraordinary collection range from philosophy to poetry, to theater, to cognitive sciences, to art criticism, to fiction, and their authors rank amongst the most significant figures in their fields, in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Topics covered include an assessment of the role of literary narratives in contemporary writing, new considerations on the novel, a redefinition of the poetic factor in poetry and life, and a discussion of how literature engages with contemporary forms of individuality.

Under the auspices of literary luminaries Hlne Cixous and the late John Ashbery, these new pieces of writing bring to light contributions by innovative and well-established authors from the English-speaking sphere, as well as never-beforetranslated prominent new voices in French theory.

Featuring original work from some of todays most influential authors, Ways of Re-Thinking Literature is an indispensable tool for anybody interested in the future and possibilities of literature as an endeavor for life, thought, and creativity.

With special cover artwork by Rita Ackermann, the volume includes contributions from Emily Apter, Philippe Artires, John Ashbery, Paul Audi, Dodie Bellamy, Tom Bishop, Hlne Cixous, Laurent Dubreuil, Tristan Garcia, Stathis Gourgouris, Donatien Grau, Boris Groys, Shelley Jackson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Camille Laurens, Vanessa Place, Mal Renouard, Peter Schjeldahl, Adam Thirlwell, and Camille de Toledo.

Tom Bishop is the Florence Lacaze Gould Professor of French, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University (NYU), USA. For fifty years, he served as Chair of the Department of French at NYU and Director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture. Amongst his many publications are, From the Left Bank: Reflections on the Modern French Theater and Novel (1997) and Pirandello and the French Theater (1960, 1970).

Donatien Grau is a Guest Curator at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA. He holds a doctorat in French and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne, France, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford, UK. He was twice a Guest Researcher at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; a Florence Lacaze Gould Lecturer, New York University; a Special Guest of French Studies, Cornell University; a Visiting Scholar, Stevanonich Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago; and a teaching fellow at the Sorbonne and cole Normale Suprieure, Paris, France.

Ways of Re-Thinking Literature

Edited by Tom Bishop and Donatien Grau

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 selection and editorial matter, Tom Bishop and Donatien Grau; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Tom Bishop and Donatien Grau to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-67574-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-67575-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-56048-9 (ebk)

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Contents

Tom Bishop and Donatien Grau

John Ashbery

PART I
Literary narratives

Tom Bishop

Emily Apter

Philippe Artires

Donatien Grau

PART II
Literature and the novel

Boris Groys

Adam Thirlwell

Tristan Garcia

PART III
Literature and the poetic

Peter Schjeldahl

Laurent Dubreuil

Stathis Gourgouris

Paul Audi

PART IV
A new subjectivity

Camille Laurens

Dodie Bellamy

Wayne Koestenbaum

Shelley Jackson

Mal Renouard

Camille de Toledo

Vanessa Place

Hlne Cixous

Emily Apter is Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Chair of Comparative Literature at New York University. Her most recent books include: Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (2013), Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (co-edited with Barbara Cassin, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood, 2014), The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature (2006). A French translation of The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature was published in 2016 by Fayard in the series Ouvertures, edited by Barbara Cassin and Alain Badiou. Together with Bruno Bosteels she co-edited Alain Badious The Age of the Poets and Other Writings on Poetry and Prose (Verso, 2014). Her most recent project is Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse and the Impolitic (Verso, 2017). She edits the book series Translation/Transnation for Princeton University Press.

Philippe Artires is a historian and writer. A Research Director at the French CRNS (National Center for Scientific Research), he is the author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books.

John Ashbery s last collection of poems was Commotion of the Birds (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2016). A two-volume set of his collected translations from the French (prose and poetry) was published in 2014 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Active in various areas of the arts throughout his career, he served as executive editor of Art News and as art critic for New York magazine and Newsweek ; he also exhibited his collages at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. He received many honors and awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation (2011), and a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House (2012). He died in September 2017 at the age of 90.

Paul Audi is a French philosopher living in Paris. For many years, he taught in several French academic institutions, as the University Paris-Val de Marne and the Catholic Institute of Paris (ICP). He is today a statutory member of the Center of Philosophy, Epistemology and Politics (PHILPOL) at the University Sorbonne Paris Descartes. Author of some thirty books, most of them exploring the relations between ethics and aesthetics in the West during the modern period, he published recently Le Pas gagn de lamour (Galile, 2016) and Analyse du sentiment intrieur (Verdier, 2017).

Dodie Bellamy writes genre-bending works that focus on sexuality, politics, and narrative experimentation, challenging the distinctions between fiction, essay, and poetry. Her most recent collection is When the Sick Rule the World (Semiotext(e), 2015). Her reflections on the Occupy Oakland movement, The Beating of Our Hearts, was published as a chapbook in conjunction with the 2014 Whitney Biennial. With Kevin Killian, she edited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 19771997 (Nightboat Books, 2017).