Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Marking Time presents an innovative account of literary time, in which the temporality and ontology of the literary are seen to be essentially intertwined. Individual chapters trace the stakes of this view of time for the status and ‘economy’ of the literary text across five 20th-century writers in French whose work is characterized by a fundamental and searching self-questioning: Maurice Blanchot, Samuel Beckett, Louis-René des Forêts, Pierre Klossowski, and Roger Laporte. A final chapter draws on these analyses to develop an inherently unstable figure of ‘saving time’, which has important repercussions for how we conceive of literary value.
Trade Review"L'originalité et l'intérêt de cette étude consiste à considérer la question du temps en rapport avec une économie hétéronome qui est exemplifiée par la logique du "saving time: préserver ou réserver et sauver sans restitution ou sans salut, de manière simultanée." - Idola Quintana Domínguez, Les Lettres romanes "Ian Maclachlan's Marking Time is a very significant critical, theoretical, and scholarly achievement." - Ian James, MHRA
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface: Questions of literature and time Marking time with Jacques Derrida Différance and the economy of the book The gift and literature’s chance of a future Performative, event, sequence Marking time and narrative time Time returning: Maurice Blanchot Time of the récit Au moment voulu The obstinate time of testimony: Louis-René des Forêts Still time: Samuel Beckett Making time for each other: Pierre Klossowski Fugal time: Roger Laporte Saving time: an invaluable offering Bibliography Index
