This thesis examines Bonnefoy’s cultivation of the performative aspects of the poetic act in his later collections of poetry. It investigates the poet’s use of the theatrical structures of poetic performance, their temporal and spatial dynamics, to deconstruct conceptual or representative modes of thought. It examines how Bonnefoy uses apostrophes to insentient phenomena and addresses to an unidentified other in his attempts to open language up to the finitude and sharing of existence. Working within language, against language, the poet cultivates what he describes as ‘un savoir, tout négatif et instable qu’il soit, que je puis peut-être nommer la vérité de la parole’. The first chapter of this thesis investigates how the image of the ephemeral flame becomes a model for a finite poetic performance in ‘La Terre’. The second chapter scrutinises how Bonnefoy makes the signifying function of language ‘passive’ to the inappropriable excess of material presence in Début et fin de la neige. The third chapter, analysing ‘La Voix lointaine’, explores how Bonnefoy dramatises the experience of self-presence as the act of listening to a distant voice. The fourth chapter, investigating the relationship between finitude and form in ‘L’Heure présente’, analyses how the dissolution of form gives rise to a form that is always à venir, a dynamic, ‘un possible’.

本論文說明儂希對現代主體形上學的解構，並將之區分為「現代主體的發展與闡述」、「解構的起始-根源條件」、「主體以及共同體的解構」三個主題。在「現代主體的發展與闡述」中，本論文澄清儂希對現代主體的理解：儂希闡述了主體的自我完成，並進一步說明主體觀念在政治上的貫徹執行。儂希根據共同體的自我實現來解釋集權主義，以及它在20世紀造成的歷史與社會災難。在「解構的起始-根源條件」中，本論文澄清儂希對解構思想的探討。儂希探索了存有的離棄狀態，詳述了存有的有限性與延異。儂希以存有的意義來取代存有的真理，並以存有意義來作為解構的根源。實存與世界奠立在存有意義之中，後者將實存向外暴露以及敞開了世界的開放性。在「主體以及共同體的解構」中，本論文澄清儂希的解構策略與運作。儂希將書寫與自我完成對立起來，藉由書寫來干擾主體的自我完成。書寫產生了無作品性，並以無作品性敞開了主體。書寫重複了意義，它讓意義重新開始，並發生成為意義事件。儂希強調共在的重要性，共在分享了存有的虛無，它不是作品，它抵抗著共同體的自我實現。共在聚集著無本質的所有實存，它暴露出每個實存的它者性，並構成了它者的共同體。 / This dissertation discusses Nancy’s deconstruction of modern metaphysics of subject and divides into three themes which are “development and elaboration of modern subject”, “archi-originary condition of deconstruction” and “deconstruction of subject and community”. In “development and elaboration of modern subject”, dissertation clarifies Nancy’s understanding of modern subject: Nancy explicates the self-completion of subject and the political effectuation of the idea of subject. Based on the self-fulfillment of community, Nancy explains totalitarianism that caused historical and social disaster in the 20th century. In “archi-originary condition of deconstruction”, dissertation clarifies Nancy’s discussion of deconstructive thought. Nancy explores the abandonment of Being and illustrates the finitude and différance of Being. Nancy replaces the truth of Being with the sense of Being and designates the sense of Being as the origin of deconstruction. Existence and world grounded in the sense of Being which exposes existence outside and spaces the openness of world. In “deconstruction of subject and community”, dissertation clarifies Nancy’s strategy and operation of deconstruction. Nancy opposes writing to self-completion and interrupts the self-completion of subject through writing. Writing produces the worklessness that spaces the subject. Writing repeats sense, begins sense anew and happens as the event of sense. Nancy emphasizes the importance of being-with that shares the nothing of Being. Being-with is not a work and resists the self-fulfillment of community. Being-with gathers all existences that are without essence, exposes the otherness of every existence and constitutes the community of others.

The thesis takes the French revue Lignes (1987-present) as its object of study to provide a new account of French intellectual culture over the last twenty-five years. Whilst there are now many studies covering the role of such revues throughout the twentieth-century, the majority of such monographs extend no further than the mid-1980s: the major novelty of this thesis is extending these accounts up until the present moment. It is largely assumed that a reaction against the Marxist and structuralist theories of the 1960s and 1970s led to embrace of liberalism and an intellectual drift to the right in France from the 1980s onwards: whilst largely supporting this account, the thesis attempts to nuance this narrative of the fate of the intellectual left in the following years by showing the persistence of what can be called a politicised 'French theory' in Lignes, and a returning left-wing militancy in recent years. In doing so, it will both reveal under-studied aspects of well-known thinkers, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, as their thought develops through their participation in a collaborative, periodical publication, and introduce lesser known thinkers who have not received an extended readership in Anglophone spheres. Lignes also argues for the continued persistence and relevance of the thought of a previous generation of thinkers, notably Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Dionys Mascolo, and the thesis concludes by examining the potential role 'French Theory' could still have in France. Furthermore, as revues provide a unique nexus of intellectual, cultural, social and political concerns, the thesis also provides a unique history of France from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 2007 financial crisis and the Arab Spring. Much of the thesis is concerned with contextualising intellectual debates within a period characterised by the moralisation of discourses, a return of religion, the global installation of neo-liberalism and the eruption of immigration as a controversial European issue. From a relatively theoretical and politically stable position to the left of the Parti socialiste, Lignes therefore provides a privileged vantage point for the mutations in French social and cultural life throughout the period.

Bound Together elucidates how gay and lesbian leather communities, in the years between 1966 and 1984, contested and expanded fungible notions of sex, community, and history, mostly through material and visual cultural systems: dress codes such as the hanky code, architectural spaces (bars, bathhouses, private clubs), garments, posters, advertisements, newsletters, films, and performances. In examining visual and material cultures, procedures of archival research, as well as the physical states of key archives associated with historic gay and lesbian leather communities, this dissertation opens out a discussion of a set of visual documents and terms rarely considered within the discipline of art history, or academia at large. Through rigorous rhetorical experimentation Bound Together seeks to propose new ways of writing histories. Long and short chapters are interpolated, telescoping between historical leather communities and key works of contemporary art which reformat 1970s documents and visual sources. Jean Luc-Nancy’s conception of “being-with,” a state of coterminous existence that lies at the foundation of being and subjecthood, provides an ideal framework for coming to terms with the challenges of writing leather histories. Nancy’s notion is one that privileges mutual and relational difference. The structure of Bound Together works similarly, building a set of differential modes of viewing, analyzing and writing. In this way I wish to, in the words of Tilottama Rajan, use “history as the condition for an internal distanciation and for self-reflection on what we do,” and to furthermore present alternatives to a discipline’s often “routinized, even commodified […] repeatable techniques.” / text

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice and sound play in these literary texts and the deconstructive-ethical philosophies of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida. This thesis argues that these texts invoke the sonic materiality of voice in the service of responding to the disremembered dead through mourning and acknowledgment.

Part 1: ‘True Receivers': Rilke and the Contemporary Poetics of Listening In this part of this thesis I argue that a contemporary ‘poetics of listening' has emerged in the UK, and explore the writing of three of our most significant poets - John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson - to find out why they have become interested in the idea of the poet as a ‘listener'. I suggest that the appeal of this listening stance accounts for their engagement with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, who thought of himself as a listening ‘receiver'; it is proposed that Rilke's notion of ‘receivership' and the way his poems relate to the earthly (or the ‘non-human') also account for the general ‘intensification' of interest in his work. An exploration of the shifting status of listening provides context for this study, and I pay particular attention to the way innovations in audio and communications technology influenced Rilke's late sequences the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. A connection is made between Rilke's ‘listening poetics' and the ‘listening' stance of Ted Hughes and Edward Thomas; this establishes a ‘listening lineage' for the contemporary poets considered in the thesis. I also suggest that there are intriguing similarities between the ideas of listening that are emerging in contemporary poetics and Hélène Cixous' concept of ‘écriture féminine'. Exploring these similarities helps us to understand the implications of the stance of the poet-listener, which is a counter to the idea that as a writer you must ‘find your voice'. Finally, it is proposed that ‘a poetics of listening' would benefit from an enriched taxonomy. Part 2 of the thesis is a collection of my poems entitled ‘Small Weather'.