Category: absence
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Any time an apology is issued, we need to ask why. Just who exactly is she apologizing to? Can you apologize to the dead?Or is this merely an exercise in… more ›
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Back when I collected personalities the way other kids collected trophies–dissociative identity disorder, for those in the know–there were two who went by the name of David. I’ve always liked… more ›
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Black Sun Lit published my essay about and translation of Edmond Jabès on Paul Celan. They are an exquisite literary journal who publishes extraordinary translations and works of literature, so I am… more ›
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“Beauty is just as vapid as its distinctions.” The recent translation of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, translated by Emma Ramadan and published by Deep Vellum, has got me thinking about apophasis,… more ›
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Imagine being a historian of nineteenth-century Paris and your academic publisher demanding to see the original city before accepting your manuscript. What kind of original would you provide? A map… more ›
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Resistances: The Problem of Fascism Walter Benjamin on fascism George Bataille on fascism Emmanuel Lévinas on fascism Jan Patočka on resistance Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism Michel Foucault on resistance Slavoj… more ›
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From October 1995 to February 1996 I lived in Poland. I was conducting research on representations of the Holocaust, both historical as well as artistic, for my master’s thesis. Concurrently,… more ›
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The great Czechoslovakian philosopher Jan Patočka writes in his First Essay of the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, “Humans in their inmost being are nothing other than this ‘openness’… more ›
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… death is both the trace we dread and the loss of all trace. – Edmond Jabès more ›
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This spring I read the collection of short stories entitled The Cannibal Night by Mexican author Luis Jorge Boone, expertly translated by George Henson. These stories reminded me about what… more ›