What if our existence is a product of its interruptions? What if the words that structure our lives are themselves governed by the periods and commas that bring them to a close, or our images by the cinematic cuts that mark them off? Are we, like Chekhov's clerk, who dreams of being pursued by angry exclamation marks, or Scorsese's Jake LaMotta, bloodied by one violently edited fight after another, the products of punctuationor as Peter Szendy asks us to think of it, punchuation?
Of Stigmatology elaborates for the first time a general theory of punctuation. Beginning with punctuation marks in the common sense, Peter Szendy goes on to trace the effects of punctuation more broadly, arguing that looking and hearing are not passive acts of reception, but themselves punctuate the images and sounds they take in. Szendy reads an astonishing range of texts and traditions, from medical auscultation to literature (Chekhov, Sterne, Kafka), philosophy (Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida), psychoanalysis (Lacan), and film (Raging Bull, The Trial, Fight Club).
Repeatedly, what Szendy finds in these works is a punctuation that marks experience itself, that seeks (and ultimately fails) to bind the subject to itself. This is the stigmatology of the punctuation mark on the page that structures texts from ancient to digital, as well as the punchuation of experience, as though at the hands of a boxer.
Of Stigmatology is the first work in any language to attempt to elaborate a general theory of punctuation. While analyzing punctuating marks in the common sense, Peter Szendy equally traces the effects of punctuation more broadly, arguing that looking and hearing are not passive acts of reception, but themselves punctuate the images and sounds they take in. To develop his argument, Szendy reads an astonishing variety of texts and traditions, including medical auscultation and its extension into philosophy, literature (Chekhov's "The Exclamation Mark," Sterne's
Tristram Shandy, Kafka's
The Trial), philosophy (Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida), psychoanalysis (Lacan), and film (
Raging Bull,
Fight Club,
The Trial), as well as the tradition of film explaining.
Repeatedly, what Szendy finds in these works is a punctuation that marks experience itself, that seeks to bind the subject to itself and that inevitably resists this same movement. This is the stigmatology of the point--the point, dot, period, and all the other marks one finds throughout the vast and remarkable tradition of punctuation, and also the
coups de points, the blows of punctuating points, the punchuation of experience, as though at the hands of a boxer.
Punctuated throughout not only with the common punctuating marks but with everything from smileys to movie stills and images from graphic novels, Szendy's book is itself the performance of the general theory of punctuation, of the stigmatology, whose elaboration it at once calls for and traces.
Daugiau apie elektronines knygas