Different symbolic traditions have different ways of describing the shift of awareness toward sacred events. While not conforming to familiar states of phenomenality, this shift of awareness corresponds to Turner's liminal phase, Artaud's metaphysical embodiment, Grotowski's "translumination," Brook's "holy theater," and Barba's "transcendent" theater-all of which are linked to the Advaitan taste of a void of conceptions. This book argues that, by allowing to come what Derrida calls the unsayable, the theater of Tom Stoppard, David Henry Hwang, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Derek Walcott and Girish Karnad induces characters and spectators to deconstruct habitual patterns of perception, attenuate the content of consciousness, and taste the void of conceptions. As the nine plays discussed in this book suggest, the internal observer lies behind all cultural constructs as a silent beyond-ness, and immanently within knowledge as its generative condition of unknowingness. The unsayable (and the language used to convey it) that Derrida finds in literature has clear affinities with the Brahman-Atman of Advaita Vedanta. Derridean deconstruction contains as a subtext the structure of consciousness that it both veils with the undecidable trappings of the mind and allows to come as an unsayable secret through a play of difference. Although Derrida views theater and the text as mutually deconstructing and claims that presence or unity "has always already begun to represent itself," the six playwrights discussed here show that cultural performance indeed points through its universally ambiguous and symbolic types toward a trans-verbal, trans-cultural wholeness.

There is a marked awareness about the language of literature and its meaning both in Indian and Western aesthetic thinking. The aestheticians of both schools hold that the language of literature embodies a significant aspect of human experience, and represents a creative pattern of verbal structure to impart meaning effectively.Modern Western aesthetic thinking, which includes theories like formalism, new criticism, stylistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, discourse analysis, semiotics and dialogic criticism, in one way or another emphasizes the study of the language of literature in order to understand its meaning. Similarly, there is a distinct focus on the language of literature and its meaning in Indian literary theories which include the theory of rasa (aesthetic experience), alamkara (the poetic figure), riti (diction), dhvani (suggestion), vakrokti (oblique expression) and aucitya (propriety). This book explores how the language of literature and its meaning have been dealt with in both Indian and Western aesthetic thinking. In doing so, the study concentrates on Kuntaka's theory of vakrokti and Anandavardhana's theory of dhvani in Indian aesthetic thinking and Russian formalism and deconstruction in Western thinking. The book categorically focuses on the intersection between the theory of vakrokti and Russian formalism and the meeting-point between the theory of dhvani and deconstruction.

This book is a thorough study of Nietzsche's thoughts on nihilism, the history of the concept, the different ways in which he tries to explain his ideas on nihilism, the way these ideas were received in the 20th century, and, ultimately, what these ideas should mean to us. It begins with an exploration of how we can understand the strange situation that Nietzsche, about 130 years ago, predicted that nihilism would break through one or two centuries from then, and why, despite the philosopher describing it as the greatest catastrophe that could befall humankind, we hardly seem to be aware of it, let alone be frightened by it.The book shows that most of us are still living within the old frameworks of faith, and, therefore, can hardly imagine what it would mean if the idea of God (as the summit and summary of all our epistemic, moral, and esthetic beliefs) would become unbelievable. The comfortable situation in which we live allows us to conceive of such a possibility in a rather harmless way: while distancing ourselves from explicit religiosity, we still maintain the old framework in our scientific and humanistic ideals. This book highlights that contemporary science and humanism are not alternatives to, but rather variations of the old metaphysical and Christian faith. The inconceivability of real nihilism is elaborated by showing that people either do not take it seriously enough to feel its threat, or - when it is considered properly - suffer from the threat, and by this very suffering prove to be attached to the old nihilistic structures.Because of this paradoxical situation, this text suggests that the literary imagination might bring us closer to the experience of nihilism than philosophy ever could. This is further elaborated with the help of a novel by Juli Zeh and a play by Samuel Beckett. In the final chapter of the book, Nietzsche's life and philosophy are themselves interpreted as a kind of literary metaphorical presentation of the answer to the question of how to live in an age of nihilism.

Distinguished critic reads Derrida's early texts in terms of sexual difference, the uncanny and psychoanalysis The first complete translation into English of Sarah Kofman's only book length study of her former teacher demonstrates the essentially affirmative and open ended nature of Derridean deconstruction. It also shows the ways in which Kofman's thinking shaped Derrida's work, especially around the topic of sexual difference. This volume will help English readers to reconsider the relation of deconstruction to current political theory as well as to research into the post human, biopolitics, globalised political theory, and the on going transformation and displacement of philosophy by the methods of cultural studies. Readings of Derrida will help redress a gap in Derrida scholarship, as well as highlight Kofman's contribution to 20th century French feminism. English complete translation of an incisive work on Derrida by a significant French feminist critic; situates Derrida's ideas in original relation to Freud, Plato, sexual difference and political philosophy; covers all the major works for which Derrida is best known and the introduction sets Kofman's work in today's theoretical context.