Startseite Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone

  • Darko Suvin EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 7. November 2017
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill
arcadia
Aus der Zeitschrift arcadia Band 52 Heft 2

Abstract

Parallels are discussed between the Biblical (Jewish and then Christian) use of ‘stumbling stone’ and Shklovsky’s thisworldly notion of estrangement – ‘making the stone stony.’ To Shklovsky’s esthetic salvation through estranged perception, Brecht adds value criteria from salvational politics, using, for example, in The Caucasian Chalk Circle a Marxist figuralism, which rationalizes the sensual body. However, estrangement as a formal device which doubts the present norms is ideologico-politically ambiguous: in the Brecht or Marxist wing it is ‘critical,’ but in other hands it may be ‘mythical’: Hamsun, Jünger, Pound, and the Iranian Ta’ziyeh play use it with a lay or religious proto-fascist horizon. The final section follows Timpanaro’s insistence on biological death as not fully reducible to politics in the usual sense, and juxtaposes stumbling, death, and creative eros as politics. In spite of Hegel’s insistence on death as a powerful negative, it is a blind spot in canonical Marxism. Even Ernst Bloch, positing hope as the central principle, does not fully engage with it, though I mention some initial useful leads from him, Brecht, and Jameson. We are left with the Freudian topology pitting eros against thanatos, and the essay closes on a discussion of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.

Works Cited

Auerbach, Erich. “Figura.” Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1959. 11–76.Suche in Google Scholar

Badiou, Alain. L’Hypothèse communiste. Fécamp: Éditions Lignes, 2009.Suche in Google Scholar

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957. Suche in Google Scholar

Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1972–1983 [qtd. as GS]. Suche in Google Scholar

The Bible. New Revised Standard Version. Ed. Bruce M. Metzger. 1989, bible.oremus.org. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.Suche in Google Scholar

Biblehub.com. Greek Concordances, biblehub.com. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.Suche in Google Scholar

Bloch, Ernst. “Entfremdung, Verfremdung: Alienation, Estrangement.” Brecht. Ed. Erika Munk. Trans. Anne Halley and Darko Suvin. New York: Bantam, 1972. 3–11.10.2307/1144598Suche in Google Scholar

Bloch, Ernst. “Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse.” The Spirit of Utopia. Trans. Anthony A. Nassar. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. 233–78.10.1515/9780804778855-003Suche in Google Scholar

Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1959.Suche in Google Scholar

Bloch, Ernst, and Theodor W. Adorno. “Something’s Missing: A Discussion between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing.” Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature. Selected Essays. Trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg. London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 3–17, staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid390/readings/Bloch+Adorno-Something's%20Missing.pdf. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.Suche in Google Scholar

Boer, Roland. Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology. Leiden: Brill, 2007. 10.1163/ej.9789004161115.i-472Suche in Google Scholar

Bourguière, André. “Le long voyage de L’Homme et la mort.” Communications 1 (2008): 49–70, cairn.info/revue-communications-2008-1-page-49.htm. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017. Suche in Google Scholar

Brecht, Bertolt. Werke. Große kommentierte Frankfurter und Berliner Ausgabe. Berlin: Aufbau and Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988–2000 [qtd. as GFBA]. Suche in Google Scholar

Bryan, Lindsay. “Vae mundo a scandalis.” Unpublished doctoral thesis. U of Toronto, 1998.Suche in Google Scholar

Dean, Jodi. The Communist Horizon. London: Verso, 2012.Suche in Google Scholar

Douzinas, Costas, and Slavoj Žižek, eds. The Idea of Communism. London: Verso, 2010. Suche in Google Scholar

Erlich, Victor. Russian Formalism:History – Doctrine. New York: Mouton, 1955. Suche in Google Scholar

Fortini, Franco. Saggi ed epigrammi. Ed. Luca Lenzini. Milano: Mondadori, 2003.Suche in Google Scholar

Grene, Marjorie. The Knower and the Known. London: Faber & Faber, 1966. Suche in Google Scholar

Guattari, Félix, and Antonio Negri. Communists Like Us. New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance. Trans. Michael Ryan. New York: Semiotext(e), 1990. Suche in Google Scholar

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Sämtliche Werke: kritische Ausgabe. Vol. 2. Eds. Johannes Hoffmeister and Georg Lasson. Leipzig: Meiner, 1949. Suche in Google Scholar

Hugo, de Sancto Victore. The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor. Trans. Jerome Taylor. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. Suche in Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971. Suche in Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. The Seeds of Time: the Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Suche in Google Scholar

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.10.1093/oseo/instance.00017818Suche in Google Scholar

Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Vol. 1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke. Vol. 23. Berlin: Dietz, 1993. Suche in Google Scholar

Morin, Edgar. L’homme et la mort dans l’histoire. Paris: Corréa, 1951. Suche in Google Scholar

Mukařovský, Jan. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1970. 10.1080/17561310.2015.1049476Suche in Google Scholar

Nancy, Jean-Luc. La Communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Bourgois, 1990. Suche in Google Scholar

Neocleous, Mark. “The Political Economy of the Dead: Marx’s Vampires.” History of Political Thought 24.4 (Winter 2003): 668–84.Suche in Google Scholar

Oberstar, Ciril. “Komunizem smrti” (The Communism of Death). Dialogi 43.11–12 (2007): 41–70. Suche in Google Scholar

Pocket Interlinear New Testament. Ed. Jay P. Green Sr. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House, 1983. Suche in Google Scholar

Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory. Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian UP, 1976. Suche in Google Scholar

Said, Edward. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983. 10.7591/9781501743429-007Suche in Google Scholar

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999. 10.1515/9781400847358Suche in Google Scholar

Scholem, Gerschom. Walter Benjamin – die Geschichte einer Freundschaft. 1975. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Suche in Google Scholar

Шкловский, Ви́ктор Б. (Viktor B. Shklovsky). “Искусство как прием” (Isskustvo kak priëm). 1917. О теории прозы. Moscow: Federatsiia, 1929. 7–23.Suche in Google Scholar

Шкловский, Ви́ктор Б. (Viktor B. Shklovsky). Khod’ konia. Berlin: Helikon, 1923.Suche in Google Scholar

Шкловский, Ви́ктор Б. (Viktor B. Shklovsky). O teorii prozy. Moscow and Leningrad: Krug, 1925. Suche in Google Scholar

Shklovsky, Viktor. A Sentimental Journey. Memoirs, 1917–1922. 1923. Trans. Richard Sheldon. London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012. Suche in Google Scholar

Shklovsky, Viktor. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love. 1923. Trans. Richard Sheldon. London: Dalkey Archive P, 2012. Suche in Google Scholar

Sommer, Doris. The Work of Art in the World. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2014. 10.1515/9780822377122Suche in Google Scholar

Stegmann, Vera. “Navid Kermani’s Literary Reflection.” The Brecht Yearbook 40. Ed. Theodore F. Rippey. Rochester, NY, and Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House, 2016, 201–16. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “15 Theses about Communism and Yugoslavia, or The Two-Headed Janus of Emancipation through the State.“ Critical Quarterly 57.2 (2015): 90–110. 10.1111/criq.12142Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Brecht and Subjectivity: Stance, Emotion as Sympathy.” Darko Suvin: A Life in Letters. Ed. Phillip E. Wegner. Vashon Island WA: Paradoxa, 2011. 133–57. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Brechtian or Pseudo‑Brechtian: Mythical Estrangement in the Berliner Ensemble Adaptation of Coriolanus.” Assaph: Studies in Theatre 3 (1986): 135–58. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Can People Be (Re)Presented in Fiction?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 663–96. 10.1007/978-1-349-19059-1_47Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Marxist Figuralism: Open Dramaturgy as Open History.” To Brecht and Beyond. 166–184. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Death into Life: For a Poetics of Anti-Capitalist Alternative.” Socialism & Democracy 26.2 (July 2012): 91–105. Reprinted in In Leviathan’s Belly: Essays for a Counter-Revolutionary Time. Baltimore MD: Wildside P for Borgo P, 2012. 309–30.10.1080/08854300.2012.686294Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction, and Political Epistemology. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Heavenly Food Denied: Life of Galileo.The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Eds. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. 139–52. 10.1017/CCOL0521414466.011Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Salvation Now, for All Flesh!” To Brecht and Beyond. 131–65.Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. To Brecht and Beyond. Brighton: Harvester P, and New York: Barnes & Noble, 1984. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “Transubstantiation of Production and Creation.” Minnesota Review n.s. no 18 (Spring 1982): 102–15. Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “The Use Value of Dying: Magical vs. Cognitive Utopian Desire in the ‘Learning Plays’ of Pseudo-Zenchiku, Waley, and Brecht.” Lessons of Japan: Assayings of Some Intercultural Stances. Montréal: Ciadest, 1996. 177–216, https://monoskop.org/images/d/d9/Suvin_Darko_1996_The_Use-Value_of_Dying.pdf. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.Suche in Google Scholar

Suvin, Darko. “What and How Are Poets For in Our Age of Want.” Unpublished manuscript.10.1215/00265667-7137305Suche in Google Scholar

Tanakh: the holy scriptures. The new JPS translation according to the traditional Hebrew text. Philadelphia et al: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985.Suche in Google Scholar

Timpanaro, Sebastiano. Sul materialismo. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1975. Suche in Google Scholar

Ure, Michael, and Mervyn Frost, eds. The Politics of Compassion. London: Routledge, 2014. 10.4324/9781315851389Suche in Google Scholar

Wirth, Andrzej. “Semeiological Aspects of the Ta’ziyeh.” Ta’ziyeh. Ed. Peter Chelkowski. New York: New York UP, 1979. 32–9. Suche in Google Scholar

Žižek, Slavoj. “The Communist Hypothesis.” First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso, 2009, 86–151.Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2017-11-7
Published in Print: 2017-10-30

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Articles
  4. Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone
  5. Hausen außer Haus: Transitorische Räume in Marilynne Robinsons Housekeeping (1980) und Ernst Augustins Robinsons blaues Haus (2012)
  6. Von dem Trauma des anderen und der Sehnsucht nach Behausung in Lutz Seilers Roman Kruso (2014)
  7. “The same blinding void as before”: Irish Neutrality in Samuel Beckett’s nouvelles
  8. Sprechende Körper: Somatische und semiotische Spuren der Hysterie in T. S. Eliots „Hysteria“
  9. Problématique du désir et du plaisir chez Honoré de Balzac et Cao Xueqin
  10. Écrire ‹ l’oral › dans Texaco de Patrick Chamoiseau
  11. Reviews
  12. Carlo Umberto Arcuri und Andreas Pfersmann, Hgg.: Lukács 2016: cent ans de „Théorie du roman“. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016 (Zeitschrift Romanesques 8 [2016]). 305 S.
  13. David E. Wellbery: Goethes Faust I: Reflexion der tragischen Form. Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2016. 100 pp.
  14. Joseph Wälzholz: Der asoziale Aufklärer: Salomon Maimons „Lebensgeschichte“. Göttingen: Wallenstein Verlag, 2016. 189 pp.
  15. John K. Noyes: Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism. U of Toronto P: Toronto, CN, 2015. 402 pp.
  16. Chloé Chaudet : Écritures de l’engagement par temps de mondialisation. Paris : Classiques Garnier (Perspectives comparatistes), 2016. 392 pp.
  17. Franco Moretti: Distant Reading. Übers. Christine Pries. Konstanz: Konstanz UP, 2016. 220 S.
  18. Christoph Benjamin Schulz: Poetiken des Blätterns. Hildesheim, Zürich und New York: Georg Olms, 2015 (Literatur – Wissen – Poetik, Bd. 4). 492 S.
  19. Michael Wögerbauer, Petr Píša, Petr Šámal und Pavel Janáček, Hgg.: Im öffentlichen Interesse. Zensur und soziale Regulierung von Literatur in der modernen tschechischen Kultur 1749–2014. (V obecném zájmu. Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře 1749–2014). Prag: Academia, ÚČL AV ČR, 2015. 2 Bde. 1661 S.
  20. Horst-Jürgen Gerigk: Lesendes Bewusstsein. Untersuchungen zur philosophischen Grundlage der Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016 (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Neue Folge, Bd. 42). 214 S.
  21. Ulrich Gaier: Wozu braucht der Mensch Dichtung? Anthropologie und Poetik von Platon bis Musil. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2017. 300 S.
Heruntergeladen am 16.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/arcadia-2017-0035/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen