Author : Daniel Heller-Roazen
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 13,23 MB
Release : 2021-03-09
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1942130481
Book Description
An intellectually adventurous account of the role of nonpersons that explores their depiction in literature and challenges how they are defined in philosophy, law, and anthropology In thirteen interlocking chapters, Absentees explores the role of the missing in human communities, asking an urgent question: How does a person become a nonperson, whether by disappearance, disenfranchisement, or civil, social, or biological death? Only somebody can become a ânobody,â but, as Daniel Heller-Roazen shows, the ways of being a nonperson are as diverse and complex as they are mysterious and unpredictable. Heller-Roazen treats the variously missing persons of the subtitle in three parts: Vanishings, Lessenings, and Survivals. In each section and with multiple transhistorical and transcultural examples, he challenges the categories that define nonpersons in philosophy, ethics, law, and anthropology. Exclusion, infamy, and stigma; mortuary beliefs and customs; childrenâs games and state censuses; ghosts and âdead soulsâ illustrate the lives of those lacking or denied full personhood. In the archives of fiction, Heller-Roazen uncovers figurations of the missingâfrom Helen of Argos in Troy or Egypt to Hawthorneâs Wakefield, Swiftâs Captain Gulliver, Kafkaâs undead hunter Gracchus, and Chamissoâs long-lived shadowless Peter Schlemihl. Readers of The Enemy of All and No Oneâs Ways will find a continuation of those booksâ intense intellectual adventures, with unexpected questions and arguments arising every step of the way. In a unique voice, Heller-Roazenâs thought and writing capture the intricacies of the all-too-human absent and absented.