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3 - “Words generally spoil things” and “Giving a man final say”: facing history in David Bradley and Philip Roth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Adam Zachary Newton
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

He wonders also about himself – that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on to the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him. It is a matter for wonder: the moment that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a specter to trouble the quiet of a later moment.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History

Submitting history as a whole to judgment, exterior to the very wars that mark its end restores to each instant its full signification in that very instant; all causes are ready to be heard. It is not the last judgment that is decisive, but the judgment of all the instants in time, when the living are judged.

Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity

Question: when does an “incident” coincide with an “operation?”

Answer: when a free and unreconstructed event in human experience gets smuggled and/or indentured into plot. Differently put, History entails Reconstruction, as Reconstruction, in some part at least, requires Fabulation.

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Facing Black and Jew
Literature as Public Space in Twentieth-Century America
, pp. 81 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

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