Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Hollow formsPostcritiqueOverview and roadmap Reality Persons and volcanoes Againstness (and Euro-American relations) The plane of coevalness Chapter 1 What is Critique? Three Types of Indocility Reflective indocility Incredulity and debtThe criterion of life Criticism and critique Chapter 2 Theory: Thinking with Literature "Reading literature, not theory" "Not philosophy but a preparation for literary criticism" Postmodernism I-experience Méconnaissance and Denkraum Chapter 3 What is a Critic? Weak Thought, Weak Theory, Italian Theory Reading and democracyWeak thought/weak theory The analysis of community "Italian Theory " Living thought Modernism/modernity Amor vitae (Life vs. Forms) Chapter 4 Language: The Return to Saussure Euemería: the natural delight of ur-attachments The many From small world to vast world The return to Saussure (language as a social fact) The hermeneutics of the subject Specters of Saussure: modernism Chapter 5 Tradition: Eliot and Work "Experimentum" (literary history) Writing the "thing" Work Who appears? The photographic portraits Double portrait Chapter 6 Text and Method: Cixous/Joyce/Lispector Living writing The hermeneutic approach (the cut) Beyond the performance of power: unwritten writing Life vs. Form according to Cixous/Lispector/Joyce What is a father? The search for method From the hermeneutical conversation to attachment Chapter 7 Poststructuralism: Faith and Lacan The spatial component of poststructuralism The problem of the gift A different relation to language From the father to paternal donation The experience of speaking The structure of the act of faith "A Slice of the Word" Conclusion Depending on your neighbor Notes Bibliography Index.