Respiration and thought: the opening of writing in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy

Author(s)

Paola Sanges Ghetti

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2016-08-16

Examining board members

Marcos Siscar; Mauricio Mendonça Cardozo; Marcelo Jacques; Eduardo Sterzi; Tiago Guilherme Pinheiro

• Advisor: Marcos Siscar

Abstract

The present thesis considers the opening of writing in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy as a way of mobilising thinking in the form of respiration, which puts itself at risk in its contact with the other. This contact is inseparable from the beating of language itself, which experiences itself and its strangeness by ceaselessly touching the limit of a contact with the other, through which the latter becomes distant. Setting out from a consideration of the necessity of maintaining a proximity to things ¿ rather than reflecting on things - we address Nancy's uneasiness with the idea of having a method. This necessity of sensible contact is elaborated through a series of readings that lead thinking into a trembling space, shaped by the simultaneity of what is not said and the manner in which it is nonetheless still said. In seeking to evade the enclosing mechanisms of discourse, Nancy's uneasiness with philosophy leads him to a sustained engagement with the experience of literature and art, which is reflected in the extremely diverse character of an oeuvre driven by a need to engage with contemporary artistic production. This experience of contact in language is also experienced as a difficulty, as the effort of maintaining a suspension in pinpointing the precise moment at which thinking ruminates its shared existence with the world in language. The weight or the gravity of thinking in writing is manifested for Nancy in a desire for a common sense, and in an extreme cautiousness in the face of the risk of comprehending the common in a homogeneous and definitive manner as that which would return, thereby annulling the weight itself. Respiration is then considered in relation to Nancy's deconstruction of religion, which is rooted in a history of sense. In this way, Nancy seeks to make evident what since the dawn of monotheism would be known and said without reason, in a language that gives voice to the absence of finality. From this perspective, language would convey a sense without finality, offering itself as a space through which man and world make contact with one another and make themselves possible (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/06961-0 - Before the stolen heart- A study about the relations between Jacques Derrida's and Jean-Luc Nancy's thought
• Grantee: Paola Sanges Ghetti
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate