This thesis attempts to explore what occurs in the act of writing; arguing that the act of writing opens a space for 'the other.' For this argument, I bring Franz Kafka who has remained unthought in terms of the act of writing in the deconstructive thinking close to Maurice Blanchot who writes both theoretical discussion and fiction specifically on the act of writing. Blanchot has written extensively on Kafka; his récits also are influenced by Kafka. In the introduction, I argue through Borges and Benjamin that Kafka and Blanchot create their past and future, so that we understand any text in the past or the future differently if we know them. In other words, works are in dialogue with one another. This creativity is actually being open to 'the other.' Chapter one argues that Blanchot criticizes language for making things absent by representing them. For him, writing should be the act of making space between word and its referent in order that the referent shows itself infinitely. This spacing, for Blanchot, is desoeuvrement or worklessness as an undoing of being, the neutral spacing that let the thing's otherness come infinitely. The second chapter argues that Joseph K. in The Castle is exposed to this spacing or desoeuvrement which makes him and the castle distance from their meaning and find the singular possibilities of their unknown nature as 'the other' infinitely. Blanchot's meaning of literature necessitates dealing with the notion of the author. In this sense, the third chapter argues that when Kafka is metamorphosed into writing he loses his identity. Writing, for Kafka, becomes the space in which he loses his sense of selfhood and sees 'the other' in the self. Chapter four, by reading Blanchot's The Instant of My Death and Kafka's Metamorphosis, argues that being exposed to 'the other' in writing necessitates the process of dying, not death as one instant that begins and ends. Writing becomes the process that interrupts the border between life and death. The self gets no determination, completion, and totality and at the same time it will not be reducible to disappearance. My fifth and sixth chapters illustrate what Blanchot's means in writing a récit. Chapter five argues that the récit as a concept questions memory as the place of passed past experiences. In memory, the past, the present and the future become the 'extended present' which means memory is the place in which neither remembering nor forgetting happens. The récit rejects memory as the fixed narrative of the past. Therefore, the récit is the open space with the possibility of inventing 'the other.' Chapter six argues that the recit is the place where opens the Freud's primal scene to the prior scenes endlessly which are not located in the past; they also occur in the future. By this futurity, he leaves the space for 'the other' in the past and the future. The seventh chapter illustrates Kafka's The Trial while thinking of the concept of the récit. The text has no pre-existent story as its origin and problematizes the concept of repetition. By removing the originary state and teleological existence, the text is open to 'the other,' the new possibilities of being written and read endlessly. The conclusion as well as further discussing what 'the other' is and how writing lets it come propose that the ethics of writing in Kafka and Blanchot is not limited only to the openness of the self to 'the other;' it also brings out the community which prepares itself for the coming of 'the other.'

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

In contemporary culture, the issues of religion and theology require serious discussion. Theists and atheists are still locked in hot debates regarding whether or not religion and theology have value for a postmodern secular society. The thoughts offered by postmodern theologians or philosophers of religion have much to offer for those on both sides o(the problem. Their work provides new grounds for thinking and reformulating religious and theological discourses that are beneficial for theists and atheists. Charles E. Winquist, Mark C. Taylor, and John D. Caputo demonstrate the irreducible roles that religion and theology continue to play. The works of these postmodern theologians are guided by a postmode1~n sensibility such that we are able to value religious tradition within our culture while· acknowledging its limits. This type of thinking also suggests new ways in which theological thinking can be of use in secular discourses. This thesis argues· that the works of postmodern theologians function in different ways to create new space for what might be called 'religion without religion' and 'theology without theology.' This thesis concludes that one can think religiously or theologically without God or metaphysics.

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This thesis presents possibilities of meaning and communication in the light of the deconstructive thinking of Jacques Derrida. The central claim of the thesis is that meaning and communication are not only possible in deconstructive thinking but that their complex and contradictory relationship with one another is at the heart of that thinking. Deconstruction will be posited as an applied understanding of the generative (that is, lived) processes of meaning and communication. Deconstruction, the thesis argues, is not, as has hitherto been suggested, a process which undermines or negates the possibility of meaning or communication. Rather, the thesis concludes that provisional possibilities of meaning are contextually resigned acts of faith, whilst faith in the impossibility of future communication is the sense of faith. Where meaning stops and communication begins is where deconstruction's faith in impossibility makes that future possible. The thesis highlights six specific contexts within which meaning and communication are provisionally and generatively explored: Derrida's writing on meaning and communication; Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy's meaningful and communicative congruities; S0ren Kierkegaard's impossible marriages; John Cowper Powys's 'marriage'; the 'realities within reality' of the 'Stonehenge' chapter of Powys's A Glastonbury Romance; and, the author's own conceptions of 'act of faith' and 'sense of faith' employed in line with the previous contexts read through John Llewelyn's 'imagination'. These six contexts are underpinned by five principal questions: what is communication? what is meaning? who or what communicates? who or what means? and, where does meaning stop and communication begin?

On the surface, Dennis Lehane’s novel Mystic River appears quite fascinated and occupied with macho ideals and ideas of heroism, vengeance, vigilantism, violence, and blind loyalty. The novel might even be said to paint a picture of a world ultimately ruled and controlled by men, who are expected to set the terms and encouraged to take charge. This points to an overt message stating that attributes such as strength, cold practicality, efficiency, action, decisiveness, and rationality – all stereo-typically masculine values – ultimately pay off and are rewarded. However, such an initial analysis may be meaningfully countered, overturned, and distrusted. Making use of feminist deconstruction, this essay argues that Mystic River’s superficial praise of stereotypical gender ideals is in fact undermined by tensions and contradictions beneath the surface of the text. This undermining in turn serves to criticize binary hierarchies at the very core of patriarchal ideology.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / The argument of this dissertation is that futurity is a central theme of phenomenology, because it is central to a proper understanding of two pillars of the phenomenological method, namely, constituting consciousness and intentionality. The centrality of futurity to phenomenology first manifests itself in all three levels of Husserl's constituting consciousness via the three-fold distinction within futurity between protention, expectation, and anticipation. This analysis of futurity within constituting consciousness reveals that the object of futurity must bear a necessary relation to our horizons of constitution, but an analysis of anticipation itself suggests that futurity cannot be solely contained within those horizons. In turning to that which opens the subject to what is beyond its own horizons of constitution, we see that futurity enables Levinas to insert a level of passive-ication into intentionality, and thereby into ethics and constituting consciousness as well. The consequences of this for phenomenology manifest themselves most clearly in Derrida's parallel analyses of futurity (via the notions of differance and the messianic) and the promise. Through this latter we see the fundamental necessity of both constituting consciousness and intentionality for the phenomenological subject. The dissertation concludes with a brief examination of how these conclusions might apply to the philosophy of religion via an analysis of the question of the possibility or impossibility of the divine. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.