Gift and Debt

By alternating literary and philosophical approaches to gift and debt, we will try to gain a historical perspective on what Maurizio Lazzarato has called “the making of the indebted man” in our contemporary neoliberal era. Important landmarks for our approach will include: Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Bataille’s The Accursed Share, Goethe’s Faust I and Faust II, and Derrida’s Given Time.