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Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone

  • Darko Suvin EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 7, 2017
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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.

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

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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