All of Nothing

The essay develops a parallax between Lispector and Heidegger with regard to the question of being: being not as an idea or a concept, or as anything substantive, but being in the spatio-temporal sense of being in being, of the event which lets each instant of “in being” take place. Instantiating this proximity, the essay focuses on dis-humanization and the role that openness to nothingness plays in this context. Lispector’s writings, especially Passion, illustrate how what hinders the true humanity of human beings is not barbarity or animality but what she calls “false humanization,” which sets humans apart from all other beings as if separate from life and nature. Heidegger’s critique of humanisms and their machinational approach to things and the world opens a similar perspective on being. Although presented in markedly different tonalities of writing, Lispector’s and Heidegger’s texts concern the “same” of the passion/pathos of being.Keywords: nothingnessdis-humanizationeventinstantHeidegger disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 This essay follows Sà Cavalcante Schuback’s crucial analysis of the gerundive sense of “time being” in Lispector’s work. As she puts it, in Passion the greatest fear is of “to be-being” (90). See Sà Cavalcante Schuback 83–111. At the same time, I also illustrate how Heidegger’s Ereignis (event) and the sense of its “while” (Weile) is in fact truly close to the gerundive sense of being, to the “is-being” she traces in Lispector.2 Writing on thaumazein (wonder) as guiding pathos of philosophy in Was ist das – die Philosophie?, Heidegger translates pathos as Stimmung (dis-position in French), and shows that thinking unfolds always in a tonality, a disposition. At issue is finding the tonality (pathos, passio) in which writing could be responsive to being. Lispector’s prose, especially her employment of gerundive forms, could be seen as seeking the tonality, the passio, of the instant. Heidegger, Was ist das – die Philosophie? 38–46.3 Heidegger coins the verb isten from the third person singular of from ist of the verb sein (see Zum Wesen der Sprache 74: 24). See also Ziarek, Language After Heidegger 45.4 The two volumes of Gesamtausgabe (GA) 73 contain numerous remarks on Einmaligkeit (literally “onetimeness”) and das Einst, as well as commentary on the eschatology of the moment. For more details, see Ziarek, “On Heidegger’s Einmaligkeit.”5 “Nothing” and “the nothing” are also at the center of Lispector’s final novel, A Breath of Life, which confirms that being (“the it”) in her prose is continually infused with the nothing.6 Sà Cavalcante Schuback provides a more extensive reflection on the formless, the continuity of writing, and the echoing in Lispector.7 Marder shows that G.H. in Passion does not fall into immanence or “melt into the world” without distinction or remainder (382).8 Commenting on Lispector’s understanding of things and their relation to language, Cixous cites Heidegger’s remark: “The word lets come into being the thing as thing,” even ventriloquizes it through Lispector: “Clarice be-dingt das Ding zu Ding (Clarice be-things the thing into the thing)” (Cixous 63). The title of Sousa’s essay is itself evocative of the importance of language as the “site” of manifestation; see “At the Site of Language.”9 See Ziarek, Language After Heidegger 13–77.10 This connection is foregrounded in Sà Cavalcante Schuback 106–07.11 For a discussion of das Einst, see Heidegger, GA 73.1: 791.12 “Das Seyn nichts ‘Menschliches’ als sein Gemächte, und dennoch braucht die Wesung des Seyns das Da-sein und so die Inständlichkeit des Menschen.” Heidegger, Beiträge, GA 65: 165

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Humanity · Nothing · Passion · Pathos · Perspective (graphical · Premise · Theology · Wonder · French Literature and Critical Theory · French Literature and Criticism · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · History · Philosophy · Social Psychology

• At the Site of Language

  Open Access•Ronald W Sousa•Chasqui•1989

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