The Claims of Literature A Shoshana Felman Reader [Paperback]

Shoshana Felman ranks as one of the most influential literary critics of the past five decades. Her work has inspired and shaped such divergent fields as psychoanalytic criticism, deconstruction, speech-act theory and performance studies, feminist and gender studies, trauma studies, and critical legal studies. Shoshana Felman has not only influenced these fields: her work has opened channels of communication between them. In all of her work Felman charts a way for literary critics to address the ways in which texts have real effects in the world and how our quest for meaning is transformed in the encounter with the texts that hold such a promise.

The present collection gathers the most exemplary and influential essays from Felmans oeuvre, including articles previously untranslated into English. The Claims of Literature also includes responses to Felmans work by leading contemporary theorists, including Stanley Cavell, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, Cathy Caruth, Juliet Mitchell, Winfried Menninghaus, and Austin Sarat.

It concludes with a section on Felman as a teacher, giving transcripts of two of her classes, one at Yale in September 2001, the other at Emory in December 2004.

Shoshana Felman ranks as one of the most important and most influential thinkers of
recent times. The essays selected for the reader are all widely viewed as classics and
represent a coherent, well-chosen and thoughtful selection. All bear witness to the clarity
of Felmans prose and her dedication to rigorous demonstration and lucid argumentation.
Indeed, Felmans work derives its pathbreaking insights though its dedication to the
clear expression of ideas and experiences that challenge the human capacity for clear
expression. By engaging with this essential human paradox (the need to communicate
that which defies communication), Felmans work addresses the most important questions
of human experience and encourages her readers to open themsellóa