A01=Sharon Cameron
academic
america
american
anthology
Author_Sharon Cameron
Category=DSB
close reading
controversial
controversy
critical
criticism
critique
debate
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
essay collection
global
herman melville
identity
impersonal
international
jonathan edwards
literary
literature
modernism
person
personhood
philosopher
philosophical
philosophy
ralph waldo emerson
scholarly
simone weil
ts eliot
united states
usa
william empson
writers
Product details
- ISBN 9780226091327
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Feb 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Philosophers have long debated the subjects of person and personhood. Sharon Cameron ushers this debate into the literary realm by considering impersonality in the works of major American writers and figures of international modernism—writers for whom personal identity is inconsequential and even imaginary. In essays on William Empson, Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, T. S. Eliot, and Simone Weil, Cameron examines the impulse to hollow out the core of human distinctiveness, to construct a voice that is no one’s voice, to fashion a character without meaningful attributes, a being that is virtually anonymous.
“To consent to being anonymous,” Weil wrote, “is to bear witness to the truth. But how is this compatible with social life and its labels?” Throughout these essays Cameron examines the friction, even violence, set in motion from such incompatibility—from a “truth” that has no social foundation. Impersonality investigates the uncompromising nature of writing that suspends, eclipses, and even destroys the person as a social, political, or individual entity, of writing that engages with personal identity at the moment when its usual markers vanish or dissolve.
“To consent to being anonymous,” Weil wrote, “is to bear witness to the truth. But how is this compatible with social life and its labels?” Throughout these essays Cameron examines the friction, even violence, set in motion from such incompatibility—from a “truth” that has no social foundation. Impersonality investigates the uncompromising nature of writing that suspends, eclipses, and even destroys the person as a social, political, or individual entity, of writing that engages with personal identity at the moment when its usual markers vanish or dissolve.
