By Chris Danta
This is often the 1st book-length research of the way 3 vital ecu thinkers—Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot—use the Binding of Isaac to light up the sacrificial scenario of the literary author. Danta indicates that literature performs an important and heretical function in those 3 writers' hugely idiosyncratic money owed of the Akedah. His declare is twofold: first of all, that every one 3 authors decide to reply to the Genesis narrative through manifesting literature; and, secondly, that every heretically endows literature—or fiction—with the ability to droop the sacrifice.
Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac is usually learn because the tale of religion in motion. yet what does it suggest to play the sport of not-quite-belief with the tale of spiritual religion? via studying the literary and heretical remedies of Isaac's sacrifice within the paintings of Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot, this booklet develops an unique account of literature as a kind of sacrificial pondering. for every, writing acts, like God's sacrificial call for of Abraham, to droop the writer's ordinary relation to his day-by-day and earthly obligations.
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Extra info for Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot
Example text
By speaking, I make my actions intelligible to those around me. ’15 Whereas in Genesis 21 Abraham is openly distressed 34 Literature Suspends Death when Sarah says to him, ‘“Get rid of that slave woman [Hagar] and her son [Ishmael], for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac”’ (Gen. 16 According to de Silentio, Abraham refuses to disclose his plans to sacrifice Isaac to any of the ethical authorities around him: his wife Sarah, his servant Eliezar, or Isaac himself.
Taylor notes, silence thereby becomes the watchword for Kierkegaard’s retelling of Genesis 22: ‘Consider the author: Johannes de Silentio. Consider the central character: Abraham, who not only does not speak, but who cannot speak. Consider the book’s central pre-occupation: silence. ’28 Kierkegaard says of Abraham in Genesis 22 that he remains silent. Indeed, at times he goes further by insisting that Abraham cannot speak to others about what God has asked him to do: ‘When Abraham’s heart is moved, when his words would provide blessed comfort to the whole world, he dares not offer comfort, for would not Sarah, would not Eliezer, would not Isaac say to him, “Why do you want to do it, then?
It is akin to supposing that Desdemona survives with a few scratches. ’9 The issue is considerably more complicated than Eagleton here lets on: while Abraham is not a murderer, surely (as Kierkegaard realises) the intention to kill another constitutes a crime? But Eagleton is right to criticise Kierkegaard’s and Derrida’s thoroughly Kierkegaardian approach to Genesis 22: for both these thinkers ignore the end of the story, the relieving moment of the ram’s substitution for Isaac. Both ask readers to suspend their sense of the ending so as to render Abraham’s murderous transgression fully apparent.