Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T07:23:27.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Utopia: Reading and Redemption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Silvana Rabinovich*
Affiliation:
National Autonomous University of Mexico
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper suggests an approach to the various possibilities of reading as a practice responsible for generating thought. It might be said that it is an approach to the dismissal of reading as the origin of other paths of thought. Utopia, understood as anticipation, yields its place to the figure of redemption (in Benjamin's sense of the word) as imminence of the absolutely other, expectation and extreme attention. The text invites the reader to try other routes in the practice of reading (other than solitary silent reading), in which the body and the senses play a part, and - especially - the other, to allow the advent of a thinking that welcomes justice. In an act of memory, reading - as heteronomy - opens onto the future.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2006

References

Barthes, R. (1976) The Pleasure of the Text, trans. R. Miller. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (1986) ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Adams, H. and Searle, L. (eds) Critical Theory Since 1965, pp. 680685. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press.Google Scholar
Benveniste, E. (1973) Indo-European: Language and Society, trans. E. Palmer. London: Faber.Google Scholar
Bialik, J. N. and Ravnitzky, Y. J. (1955) Sefer ha-agadah. Tel Aviv: Dvir.Google Scholar
Celan, P. (2004) ‘Gegenlicht’ [Counter-light] in Mohn und Gedächtnis (1952). Stuttgart: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Cixous, H. (1997) Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing, trans. E. Prenowitz. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx, trans. P. Kamuf. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1996) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Illich, I. (1993) In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary on Hugh’s Didascalicon. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Jabès, E. (1993) A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Book, trans. R. Waldrop. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Jousse, M. (1974) L’anthropologie du geste. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Lévinas, E. (1998) Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Mosès, S. (1992) ‘Utopie et rédemption’, in L’ange de l’histoire: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Petrucci, A. (1999) ‘Reading to Read: A Future for Reading’ in Cavallo, G. and Chartier, R. (eds) A History of Reading in the West, trans. L. G. Cochrane. Amherst: Massachusetts University Press.Google Scholar
Ramírez, Sergio (2004) ‘Las trompetas de Jericó’ [The Trumpets of Jericho], Página 12, Buenos Aires, 4 October.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, F. (2005) The Star of Redemption, trans. B. E. Galli. Madison: Wisconsin University Press.Google Scholar
Saenger, P. (1999) ‘Reading in the Later Middle Ages’, in Cavallo, G. and Chartier, R. (eds) A History of Reading in the West, trans. L. G. Cochrane. Amherst: Massachusetts University Press.Google Scholar
Scholem, G. (1996) On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. R. Manheim. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Tadié, J.-Y. and Tadié, M. (1999) Le sens de la mémoire. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar