Literature and Judgment

Investigates the intersections between acts of literature and acts of judgment, between language and the law. How is literature to be judged, when is it "good" or "bad"? Does literature lie, and if so, does it matter? Does it hide a crime? And, in turn: does literature provide its own particular kind of judgment, one that may make evident the very fictional status of the law? Readings span from the Bible to contemporary post-colonial readings (Rousseau, Tolstoy, Zola, Freud, Kafka, Arendt, Benjamin, Henry James, Primo Levi, Coetzee, Sadegh Hedayat).