Death's Following : Mediocrity, Dirtiness, Adulthood, Literature / John Limon.
Limon, John, author.
2022
Available Online

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Title Death's Following : Mediocrity, Dirtiness, Adulthood, Literature / John Limon.
Author Limon, John, author.
ISBN 9780823291342
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823291342
Published New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]
Copyright ©2012
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (212 p.) : 2 Illustrations, black and white
Item Number 10.1515/9780823291342 doi
Summary Almost all twentieth-century philosophy stresses the immanence of death in human life-as drive (Freud), as the context of Being (Heidegger), as the essence of our defining ethics (Levinas), or as language (de Man, Blanchot). In Death's Following, John Limon makes use of literary analysis (of Sebald, Bernhard, and Stoppard), cultural analysis, and autobiography to argue that death is best conceived as always transcendentally beyond ourselves, neither immanent nor imminent. Adapting Kierkegaard's variations on the theme of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac while refocusing the emphasis onto Isaac, Limon argues that death should be imagined as if hiding at the end of an inexplicable journey to Moriah. The point is not to evade or ignore death but to conceive it more truly, repulsively, and pervasively in its camouflage: for example, in jokes, in logical puzzles, in bowdlerized folk songs. The first of Limon's two key concepts is adulthood: the prolonged anti-ritual for experiencing the full distance on the look of death. His second is dirtiness, as theorized in a Jewish joke, a logical exemplum, and T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday": In each case, unseen dirt on foreheads suggests the invisibility of inferred death. Not recognizing death immediately or admitting its immanence and imminence is for Heidegger the defining characteristic of the "they," humanity in its inauthentic social escapism. But Limon vouches throughout for the mediocrity of the "they" in its dirty and ludicrous adulthood. Mediocrity is the privileged position for previewing death, in Limon's opinion: practice for being forgotten. In refusing the call of twentieth-century philosophy to face death courageously, Limon urges the ethical and aesthetic value of mediocre anti-heroism.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
In Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
Fordham University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780823242801
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Frontmatter
Contents
Text and Doctrine: Adulthood and Dirtiness
1. Preliminary Expectoration
2. Alas a Dirty Third: Th e Logic of Death
Reasons: Mediocrity, Melancholy, and Play
3. Thomas Bernhard's Rant
4. Following Sebald
5. Tickling the Corpse: Tom Stoppard's Memento Mori
Uses: Coming to Death in Autobiography and Culture
6. Don Rickles's Rant
7. Too Late, My Brothers
8. Re: Barth
Notes
Index

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