Daniel Heller-Roazen beschäftigt sich mit Fragen der Sprache, der Sinneswahrnehmung und des Rechts über verschiedene literarische Traditionen hinweg. Seine Arbeit untersucht, wie unser Weltverständnis durch Vergessen geformt wird und wie sich das Wesen menschlicher Erfahrung aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Immateriellen ergibt. Sein authentischer Stil zeichnet sich durch scharfsinnige Analysen aus, die Philosophie, Literaturgeschichte und kritische Theorie miteinander verknüpfen und den Lesern neue Perspektiven auf grundlegende Konzepte eröffnen. Heller-Roazens Schriften decken tiefe Verbindungen zwischen scheinbar disparaten Bereichen des Denkens und der Kultur auf.
An original, elegant, and far-reaching philosophical inquiry into the sense of being sentient--what it means to feel that one is alive--that draws on philosophical, literary, psychological, and medical accounts from ancient, medieval, and modern cultures
"From missing persons to disenfranchised civil subjects, from individuals tainted with infamy to the dead, Absentees explores the varieties of "nonpersons," human beings all too human, drawing examples, terms and concepts from the archives of European and American literature, legal studies, and the social sciences"--
An exploration of secret languages, moving among hermetic artificial tongues as diverse as criminal jargons and divine speech.
On the Forgetting of Language
"In Echolalias, Daniel Heller-Roazen reflects on the many forms of linguistic forgetfulness. In twenty-one concise chapters, he moves between classical, medieval, and modern culture, exploring the interrelations of speech, writing, memory, and oblivion. Whether the subject is medieval literature or modern fiction, classical Arabic poetry or the birth of French language, structuralist linguistics or Freud's writings on aphasia, Heller-Roazen considers with precision and insight the forms, effects, and ultimate consequences of the persistence and disappearance of language. In speech, he argues, destruction and construction often prove inseparable. Among speaking communities, the vanishing of one language can mark the emergence of another, and among individuals, the experience of the passing of speech can lie at the origin of literary, philosophical, and artistic creation."--Jacket