La fragmentation apparente de l’écriture de David Markson, de Reader’s Block (1996) à TheLast Novel (2007), s’assortit d’une continuité assumée par une voix narrative mise en scènejusque dans sa prétendue disparition. Malgré le rejet des conventions fictionnelles annoncédans This is Not a Novel (2001), Markson fait preuve d’un attachement paradoxal au roman,jouant du caractère protéiforme du genre jusqu’à l’excès plutôt que jusqu’à l’épuisement, dansun style aussi prolifique que minimaliste qui fait la part belle au non dit malgré la présenceoccasionnelle de commentaires métafictionnels. L’analyse de l’ensemble éclectique des écritsde David Markson (1927-2010) montre que la pratique de la citation, qui constitue l’essentielde la matière de ses derniers textes, est à l’oeuvre dès ses débuts d’auteur, et que sousl’apparence d’une différence radicale ses derniers « romans » comportent des traces de sonpassage par le roman policier, l’anthologie, le western, la poésie, ou des formesd’autobiographie et de monologue intérieur. L’influence de Malcolm Lowry dépasse le cadrede l’étude que David Markson consacra à Au-dessous du volcan, ou de son propre « romanmexicain ». Des instruments linguistiques, énonciatifs et cognitifs, permettent d’explorer lefonctionnement du roman « expérimental » de David Markson, et de mettre en évidence lerôle liant de l’anaphore et des marques d’énonciation dans une écriture faussement disjointe etneutre. Donnant à voir ce que masque l’idée de rupture, devenue conventionnelle, le lien soustendla phrase, le texte, et l’oeuvre, malgré un éclatement – partiel – de l’écriture en fragments,et un bouleversement – relatif – de la linéarité / The seeming fragmentation of David Markson’s writing from Reader’s Block (1996) to TheLast Novel (2007) is combined with a form of continuity led by a narrative voice whoseapparent vanishing is merely staged. Despite his claiming to reject all fictional conventions inThis is Not a Novel (2001), Markson proves paradoxically attached to the novel as a form,exploring the multiple possibilities of the genre rather than driving it to exhaustion. His styleis both minimalist and profuse, and leaves much unsaid despite existing – if occasional –metafictional comments. A close reading of the miscellaneous works by David Markson(1927-2010) shows that his extensive use of quotations, making up the main material of hislater works, was a very early hallmark of his writings. For all their apparently radicaldifference, his later texts still bear signs that can be traced back to previous literaryexperiments as varied as detective novels, an anthology, a western, poetry, quasiautobiographyand interior monologue. Malcolm Lowry’s influence on Markson’s workreaches beyond his early study of Under the Volcano and his own « Mexican novel ». Placingthe text under close scrutiny by means of linguistic tools, mainly enunciative and cognitive,provides evidence of the linking role of anaphoric devices and of a subjective handling of adeceitfully disconnected and neutral writing. The search for breaks and breaches has nowbecome conventional, but actually conceals what can be revealed when looking forconnections. Indeed, continuity still underpins sentence, text and work, despite a (partial)splitting of the text into fragments and a (relative) upsetting of linear order

This dissertation studies a group of contemporary Anglo-American novelists who contribute to the development of a new humanism after the postmodern critique of Euro-American culture. As such, these writers respond to positions in twentieth-century philosophy that converge in a call for silence which has an ontological as well as ethical valence: as a way of rigorously thinking the ‘outside’ to language, it avoids charges of metaphysical inauthenticity; as an ethical stance in the wake of the Shoah, it eschews a complicity with the reifications of modern culture. How to reconcile this post-metaphysical promise with the politico-aesthetic inadequacy of speechlessness is the central question for this nexus of novelists—David Markson, Bret Easton Ellis, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith—at the center of which the study locates Wallace as a key figure of contemporary literature. By reconstructing the conversation among these authors, this dissertation argues that the nexus writers turn to indirect means of representation that do justice to the demand for silence in matters of metaphysics, but also gesture past it in the development of a neo-romantic aesthetics that invites the humanist category of the self back onto the scene after its dismissal by late postmodernism. The key to such indirection lies in an aporetic method that inspires explorations of metaphysical assumptions by seducing readers to an ambiguous site of aesthetic wonder; in conversation with a range of contemporary philosophers, the dissertation defines this affective site as a place of proximity, rather than absorption or detachment, which balances out the need for metaphysical distance with the productive desire for a fullness of experience. Such proximate aesthetic experiences continue the work of ‘doing metaphysics’ in post-metaphysical times by engaging our habitual responsiveness to the categories involved. Hence the novels discussed here stage limit cases of reason such as the unknowable world, the unreachable other, the absence of the self, and the unstable hierarchy between irony and sincerity: Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress imagines skepticism as literal abandonment and reminds us of our metaphysical indebtedness to a desired object/world; Ellis’s American Psycho shows the breakdown of communication due to a similarly skeptical vision of human interaction and presents a violence that tries to force a response from the desired subject/person; Wallace’s Infinite Jest creates a large canvas on which episodes of metaphysical and literal ‘stuckness’ afford possibilities for becoming human; Smith’s The Autograph Man, finally, pays attention to gestural language at the breaking point of materialism and theology, nature and culture, tragedy and comedy. / Graduate / 2020-08-01

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo do livro Wittgenstein‟s mistress (1988), do escritor estadunidense David Markson (1927 – 2010), cujo texto é narrado em primeira pessoa por uma mulher que se autodenomina Kate e que se apresenta como sendo o último ser humano sobrevivente no mundo. Habitando uma casa em alguma praia, ela senta-se diante da máquina de escrever e divaga sobre suas lembranças e viagens, misturando memória e imaginação, de forma a deixar-nos, nós, os leitores, sem um lastro firme para identificar o que é realidade e o que é ilusão. A análise aqui realizada aborda a estrutura paradoxal desse texto, que não consegue estabelecer de modo concreto um mundo ficcional no qual a personagem narradora habita, ou seja, não podemos saber o que realmente acontece ou não com ela. Esse efeito se dá principalmente por um estilo esquizofrênico que será relacionado com as reflexões e observações que o filósofo Ludwig Wittgenstein denomina ―doenças do intelecto‖, as quais, segundo o professor de psicologia clínica e escritor Louis A. Sass, aproximam-se da esquizofrenia. O objetivo desta pesquisa é examinar a maneira como se imbricam as relações entre a linguagem ficcional do livro de Markson e a realidade extratextual, através de uma visão wittgensteiniana que coloca a linguagem imersa na nossa forma de vida, ancorada sempre nas práticas e costumes compartilhados pela sociedade. A análise mostrará que mesmo em um texto onde predomina esse estilo esquizofrênico que faz a linguagem se fechar no mundo interior da personagem, e também no mundo intratextual, ainda há a possibilidade de rompimento deste solipsismo textual, conectando essa linguagem à esfera intersubjetiva e comunitária. Esse rompimento só é possível através da apresentação (ou exteriorização) de vivências, que depende de uma confiança na linguagem como prática social e imersa na nossa forma de vida, assim como de uma confiança na prática de contar histórias. / This M.A. thesis analyses Wittgenstein‟s Mistress (1988), a book written by the American author David Markson (1927-2010), whose text is narrated, in the first person, by a woman who calls herself Kate. Declaring that she is the last remaining person alive in the world, Kate sits in front of her typewriter, in a house on a beach somewhere, revisiting her recollections and her travels. Memory and imagination are mixed in such a way that Kate leaves us, the readers, without a solid basis to separate reality from delusion. The focus of my research is the analysis of the paradoxal structure of this text that cannot sets up a fictional world in a concrete way. We cannot find a fictional world in which the narrator lives and so we cannot really know what happens or not happens to her. This effect exists mainly in a schizophrenic style which will be related to the reflections and observations made by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein about the ―sicknesses of the understanding‖ – which according to professor of clinical psychology and writer Louis A. Sass, come close to the realm of schizophrenia. The aim of this research is to examine the imbrications respecting the fictional language of Markson‘s book and the extratextual reality. This will be done through a Wittgensteinian perspective of language as something absorbed in our form of life, and grounded in practices and mores shared by society. The analysis will show that even in a text in which that schizophrenic style prevails, which makes language close itself in the internal world of the character and the text, there is still the possibility to break with this textual solipsism and connect language to the intersubjective and communal sphere. This break can only occur through the presentation (or exteriorization) of experiences that depend on a trust in language as a social practice immersed in our form of life, and on the trust in the practice of telling stories.

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo do livro Wittgenstein‟s mistress (1988), do escritor estadunidense David Markson (1927 – 2010), cujo texto é narrado em primeira pessoa por uma mulher que se autodenomina Kate e que se apresenta como sendo o último ser humano sobrevivente no mundo. Habitando uma casa em alguma praia, ela senta-se diante da máquina de escrever e divaga sobre suas lembranças e viagens, misturando memória e imaginação, de forma a deixar-nos, nós, os leitores, sem um lastro firme para identificar o que é realidade e o que é ilusão. A análise aqui realizada aborda a estrutura paradoxal desse texto, que não consegue estabelecer de modo concreto um mundo ficcional no qual a personagem narradora habita, ou seja, não podemos saber o que realmente acontece ou não com ela. Esse efeito se dá principalmente por um estilo esquizofrênico que será relacionado com as reflexões e observações que o filósofo Ludwig Wittgenstein denomina ―doenças do intelecto‖, as quais, segundo o professor de psicologia clínica e escritor Louis A. Sass, aproximam-se da esquizofrenia. O objetivo desta pesquisa é examinar a maneira como se imbricam as relações entre a linguagem ficcional do livro de Markson e a realidade extratextual, através de uma visão wittgensteiniana que coloca a linguagem imersa na nossa forma de vida, ancorada sempre nas práticas e costumes compartilhados pela sociedade. A análise mostrará que mesmo em um texto onde predomina esse estilo esquizofrênico que faz a linguagem se fechar no mundo interior da personagem, e também no mundo intratextual, ainda há a possibilidade de rompimento deste solipsismo textual, conectando essa linguagem à esfera intersubjetiva e comunitária. Esse rompimento só é possível através da apresentação (ou exteriorização) de vivências, que depende de uma confiança na linguagem como prática social e imersa na nossa forma de vida, assim como de uma confiança na prática de contar histórias. / This M.A. thesis analyses Wittgenstein‟s Mistress (1988), a book written by the American author David Markson (1927-2010), whose text is narrated, in the first person, by a woman who calls herself Kate. Declaring that she is the last remaining person alive in the world, Kate sits in front of her typewriter, in a house on a beach somewhere, revisiting her recollections and her travels. Memory and imagination are mixed in such a way that Kate leaves us, the readers, without a solid basis to separate reality from delusion. The focus of my research is the analysis of the paradoxal structure of this text that cannot sets up a fictional world in a concrete way. We cannot find a fictional world in which the narrator lives and so we cannot really know what happens or not happens to her. This effect exists mainly in a schizophrenic style which will be related to the reflections and observations made by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein about the ―sicknesses of the understanding‖ – which according to professor of clinical psychology and writer Louis A. Sass, come close to the realm of schizophrenia. The aim of this research is to examine the imbrications respecting the fictional language of Markson‘s book and the extratextual reality. This will be done through a Wittgensteinian perspective of language as something absorbed in our form of life, and grounded in practices and mores shared by society. The analysis will show that even in a text in which that schizophrenic style prevails, which makes language close itself in the internal world of the character and the text, there is still the possibility to break with this textual solipsism and connect language to the intersubjective and communal sphere. This break can only occur through the presentation (or exteriorization) of experiences that depend on a trust in language as a social practice immersed in our form of life, and on the trust in the practice of telling stories.

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo do livro Wittgenstein‟s mistress (1988), do escritor estadunidense David Markson (1927 – 2010), cujo texto é narrado em primeira pessoa por uma mulher que se autodenomina Kate e que se apresenta como sendo o último ser humano sobrevivente no mundo. Habitando uma casa em alguma praia, ela senta-se diante da máquina de escrever e divaga sobre suas lembranças e viagens, misturando memória e imaginação, de forma a deixar-nos, nós, os leitores, sem um lastro firme para identificar o que é realidade e o que é ilusão. A análise aqui realizada aborda a estrutura paradoxal desse texto, que não consegue estabelecer de modo concreto um mundo ficcional no qual a personagem narradora habita, ou seja, não podemos saber o que realmente acontece ou não com ela. Esse efeito se dá principalmente por um estilo esquizofrênico que será relacionado com as reflexões e observações que o filósofo Ludwig Wittgenstein denomina ―doenças do intelecto‖, as quais, segundo o professor de psicologia clínica e escritor Louis A. Sass, aproximam-se da esquizofrenia. O objetivo desta pesquisa é examinar a maneira como se imbricam as relações entre a linguagem ficcional do livro de Markson e a realidade extratextual, através de uma visão wittgensteiniana que coloca a linguagem imersa na nossa forma de vida, ancorada sempre nas práticas e costumes compartilhados pela sociedade. A análise mostrará que mesmo em um texto onde predomina esse estilo esquizofrênico que faz a linguagem se fechar no mundo interior da personagem, e também no mundo intratextual, ainda há a possibilidade de rompimento deste solipsismo textual, conectando essa linguagem à esfera intersubjetiva e comunitária. Esse rompimento só é possível através da apresentação (ou exteriorização) de vivências, que depende de uma confiança na linguagem como prática social e imersa na nossa forma de vida, assim como de uma confiança na prática de contar histórias. / This M.A. thesis analyses Wittgenstein‟s Mistress (1988), a book written by the American author David Markson (1927-2010), whose text is narrated, in the first person, by a woman who calls herself Kate. Declaring that she is the last remaining person alive in the world, Kate sits in front of her typewriter, in a house on a beach somewhere, revisiting her recollections and her travels. Memory and imagination are mixed in such a way that Kate leaves us, the readers, without a solid basis to separate reality from delusion. The focus of my research is the analysis of the paradoxal structure of this text that cannot sets up a fictional world in a concrete way. We cannot find a fictional world in which the narrator lives and so we cannot really know what happens or not happens to her. This effect exists mainly in a schizophrenic style which will be related to the reflections and observations made by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein about the ―sicknesses of the understanding‖ – which according to professor of clinical psychology and writer Louis A. Sass, come close to the realm of schizophrenia. The aim of this research is to examine the imbrications respecting the fictional language of Markson‘s book and the extratextual reality. This will be done through a Wittgensteinian perspective of language as something absorbed in our form of life, and grounded in practices and mores shared by society. The analysis will show that even in a text in which that schizophrenic style prevails, which makes language close itself in the internal world of the character and the text, there is still the possibility to break with this textual solipsism and connect language to the intersubjective and communal sphere. This break can only occur through the presentation (or exteriorization) of experiences that depend on a trust in language as a social practice immersed in our form of life, and on the trust in the practice of telling stories.

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper.