Dr Patricia Pericic

This thesis will examine the problem of alterity that presents itself for “being” in relation to “language” in James Joyce’s Dubliners, Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. I will argue that being in relation to language manifests itself into an ethical problem that can be traced back to the subject’s search for an origin. Blanchot’s writings on the “limit-experience” will be used as a methodological approach to the problem of being in relation to language. The theme of death and dying will be explored in each chapter through the dialectic of negativity. The dialectic of negativity arises from the problem of separation that comes between being and language. As being faces the limit to language, the subject faces the limits to being seen as another negative presence. Thus, once the subject’s negative thought doubles into the negation of absence, being becomes infinitely estranged by language. Here, the subject’s experience of separation manifests itself into signs of “affliction” that resembles a state of “dying” as being faces absence. Moreover, the dialogic of negativity opens up a dialogue between the subject’s relation to language and the subject that is questioned within the narrative. Therefore, Blanchot’s notion of the “neuter” will be used to explore the critical character of the narrator that questions the subject within the narrative from the exterior God like position, also linked to Blanchot’s notion of the “Outside”. The Outside space demands an ethical response from each subject called into question and afflicted with the haunting nature of being a double. This doubling space of alterity will be traced in this thesis in order to reveal a crisis for the subject in the irreducible state for “being-in-itself” that is locked in the sacred space of literature and present at the final experience of the limit to the Outside.

This thesis explores Maurice Blanchot’s notion of the “limit-experience” through a close reading of Thomas the Obscure. I examine Blanchot’s notion of the limit-experience through Thomas’ symptoms of psychosis and melancholia. These symptoms are important for understanding the “limit-experience” because they show the corrosive force of language on identity. Blanchot emphasizes the limits to thought and knowledge that is outside of the lived experience. I argue that Thomas’ “limit-experience” depicts a missed experience that includes both self and the other relations. Further, I suggest that Blanchot provides a unique account of what it is to put being into question but that he does so in literature. His récit will be examined here accordingly in terms of the way it enacts a questioning of the “limit-experience”.

The notion of the “limit-experience” hinges upon the idea that language is a counter-world to the real. Language is portrayed as an absence and presence that conceals and reveals being. I trace this thought through the narration of Thomas’ presence that is pushed to the extreme limits of experience and knowledge. I approach Thomas’ series of “limit-experiences” through a twofold perspective as I investigate his relationship with “the image” and “the symbol”. I argue that these two relationships with the anterior link Thomas’ being-in and for-itself (consciousness) to culture/ presence/ “I”.