Abstract
Literature is both singular and ethical, two characteristics that are found to be contradictory. Through a dialogue with Samuel Weber's recent research, we may find a better way to understand this poetic problem. The key to understanding the singular is to understand iterability. Weber distinguishes the potential and impossible iterability from the realistic and possible repetition, revealing that iterability, a spectral after-effect of the repetition, is not “repetition” but “latent repetition.” Thus, the difference of the singular as a movement of potential does not equate to the individual, although it is often equated with the individual under the mono-theological identity paradigm to avoid death. Nor can the singular be generalized and dissolved into the kind of species. These two important differences involve such key ethical issues as the ways in which individuality and universality should be examined. Weber further emphasizes the responsibility to respond and witness in “autoimmunity,” so that the singular acquires its own ethics through iterability and is put into practice in linguistic mechanisms such as gerunds. In the development of research on literary ethics today, it is essential to engage the accomplishments of the research on literary singularity.
Keywords
singular, ethics, Samuel Weber, iterability, autoimmunity
First Page
98
Last Page
108
Recommended Citation
Yang, Liu. 2024. "How the Singular Connects to Ethics: Deep Deduction of Samuel Weber's Poetics of Iterability." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 44, (4): pp.98-108. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol44/iss4/11
