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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Siemerling, Winfried, 1956-

Title Discoveries of the other : alterity in the work of Leonard Cohen, Hubert Aquin, Michael Ondaatje, and Nicole Brossard / Winfried Siemerling.

Publication Info. Toronto [Ont.] ; Buffalo [N.Y.] : University of Toronto Press, [1994]
©1994

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (viii, 259 pages).
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Theory/culture
Theory/culture series.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents 1. Introduction: Discoveries of the Other -- 2. Hailed by Koan: Leonard Cohen and the Aesthetics of Loss. Poet, Priest, and Prophet: Community and the Production of the Other. Praying for Translation: Beautiful Losers and the Revenge of Names -- 3. Hubert Aquin: Language and Legitimation. An Other('s) Eye. An Other('s) Past. Language, Legitimation, Representation. Alterity, AlterNation, AlterNative: Symmetry and Rupture in Prochain Episode and Trou de memoire. Prochain Episode and the Originality of the Other: A Battle of Symmetries? The F(l)ight of Reason: Trou de memoire -- 4. 'Scared by the Company of the Mirror': Temptations of Identity and Limits of Control in the Work of Michael Ondaatje. 'Governed by Fears of Certainty'. Sonographs of a Star in the Mirror: 'Author and Hero' in Coming Through Slaughter. Enacting Metaphor: Running in the Family. 'Lights': Oral History and the Writing of the Other in In the Skin of a Lion.
Summary Winfried Siemerling examines alterity in the work of four innovative postmodern authors, exploring self and other as textual figures of the unknown. Subjectivity appears mediated, in these texts, by a self-reflexive work in language, seeking to grasp itself in relation to a significant and often fascinating, but also enigmatic, other. Siemerling notes that the question of the other constitutes the opening or gap of knowledge that sets the texts in motion. Because the other shows a marked tendency to escape conclusive definition, however, an articulation of the limits of knowledge becomes the condition under which the discovering subject itself apprehends its own precarious being.
The texts examined open the space between 'heterological' and 'thetic' moments of alterity. Siemerling explores Cohen's ways of eluding the self-imprisonment of a subject that names and defines the other. Cohen also uses ironic strategies in which the speaking 'I' turns against both itself and the addressee in order to confound thetic certainties. Hubert Aquin's work, responding to a Sartrean concept of alterity and the discourses of decolonization influenced by it, negotiates a historically defined Quebecois experience of domination by the other. The self-reflexive discoveries of the other in Michael Ondaatje's texts follow elusive figures that often appear adumbrated in the margins of history. In the domain of gender and sexuality, Nicole Brossard's texts similarly engage the double problematic of thetic alterity and heterology.
Siemerling concludes that the works under consideration offer heterological discoveries that maintain a productive 'negativity' (Kristeva) with respect to given knowledge and fixed articulations of self and other.
Access Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL
Reproduction Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL
System Details Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Processing Action digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Aquin, Hubert, 1929-1977 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Aquin, Hubert, 1929-1977.
Criticism and interpretation.
Brossard, Nicole -- Criticism and interpretation.
Brossard, Nicole.
Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016.
Ondaatje, Michael, 1943- -- Criticism and interpretation.
Ondaatje, Michael, 1943-
Aquin, Hubert, 1929-1977.
Brossard, Nicole.
Cohen, Leonard, 1934-
Ondaatje, Michael, 1943-
Aquin, Hubert.
Cohen, Leonard, 1934- -- Critique et interprétation.
Aquin, Hubert, 1929-1977 -- Critique et interprétation.
Ondaatje, Michael, 1943- -- Critique et interprétation.
Brossard, Nicole -- Critique et interprétation.
Aquin, Hubert.
Brossard, Nicole.
Canadian fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
Canadian fiction.
Chronological Term 20th century
Subject French-Canadian literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
French-Canadian literature.
Canadian literature -- Psychological aspects.
Canadian literature -- Psychological aspects.
Canadian literature.
Difference (Psychology) in literature.
Difference (Psychology) in literature.
Postmodernism (Literature) -- Canada.
Postmodernism (Literature)
Canada.
Outsiders in literature.
Outsiders in literature.
Self in literature.
Self in literature.
Canadian literature -- Psychological aspects.
Chronological Term 1900 - 1999
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Other Form: Print version: Siemerling, Winfried, 1956- Discoveries of the other. Toronto [Ont.] ; Buffalo [N.Y.] : University of Toronto Press, ©1994 (DLC) 95106804
ISBN 9781442683907 (electronic book)
1442683902 (electronic book)
1282002953
9781282002951
0802005179
9780802005175