Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

This book explores the fictional work of Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the eminent 20th-century Brazilian writer. It employs the theoretical framework of "affirmative biopolitics" by Roberto Esposito, engaging with Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, alongside voices like Mircea Eliade, Anthony Giddens, and Agata Bielik-Robson. The focus is on rethinking and valuing “impersonality,” crucial for understanding the anthropological, metaphysical, ethical, and political implications in Lispector's works. The main thesis posits that Lispector’s writings, from journalistic chronicles to significant books like The Passion According to G.H., present a complex anthropological vision marked by an ontological and ethical “deadlock” between personality and impersonality. This vision suggests that humans are trapped in a personal mode of existence, separated from their ontological essence, leading to a metaphysical guilt. The book analyzes this deadlock both in individual and communal-political contexts, highlighting the cryptotheological dimension in Lispector’s mystical and messianic themes rooted in Jewish tradition.

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Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

This book explores the fictional work of Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the eminent 20th-century Brazilian writer. It employs the theoretical framework of "affirmative biopolitics" by Roberto Esposito, engaging with Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, alongside voices like Mircea Eliade, Anthony Giddens, and Agata Bielik-Robson. The focus is on rethinking and valuing “impersonality,” crucial for understanding the anthropological, metaphysical, ethical, and political implications in Lispector's works. The main thesis posits that Lispector’s writings, from journalistic chronicles to significant books like The Passion According to G.H., present a complex anthropological vision marked by an ontological and ethical “deadlock” between personality and impersonality. This vision suggests that humans are trapped in a personal mode of existence, separated from their ontological essence, leading to a metaphysical guilt. The book analyzes this deadlock both in individual and communal-political contexts, highlighting the cryptotheological dimension in Lispector’s mystical and messianic themes rooted in Jewish tradition.

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Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

by Wojciech Sawala
Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

Dimensions of the Impersonal in Clarice Lispector: Ecstasy, Horror, Solidarity

by Wojciech Sawala

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Overview

This book explores the fictional work of Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the eminent 20th-century Brazilian writer. It employs the theoretical framework of "affirmative biopolitics" by Roberto Esposito, engaging with Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, alongside voices like Mircea Eliade, Anthony Giddens, and Agata Bielik-Robson. The focus is on rethinking and valuing “impersonality,” crucial for understanding the anthropological, metaphysical, ethical, and political implications in Lispector's works. The main thesis posits that Lispector’s writings, from journalistic chronicles to significant books like The Passion According to G.H., present a complex anthropological vision marked by an ontological and ethical “deadlock” between personality and impersonality. This vision suggests that humans are trapped in a personal mode of existence, separated from their ontological essence, leading to a metaphysical guilt. The book analyzes this deadlock both in individual and communal-political contexts, highlighting the cryptotheological dimension in Lispector’s mystical and messianic themes rooted in Jewish tradition.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781040429266
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 09/18/2025
Series: Routledge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 280

About the Author

Wojciech Sawala is assistant professor in the Department of Portuguese at Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland. Comparatist and Latin Americanist, specializes in the continent’s 20th century narrative classics, including Borges, Cortázar, Lispector and Guimarães Rosa. His research interests include biopolitics, postsecularism and Jewish messianism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Constructing/Dismantling Personhood

Humanity as a Dispositif

“Human Setup”: On the History of the Notion of a Person

Persona as Human’s Ontological Status

Beyond the Dispositif of a Person: What Remains

Ethics of Impersonality

Chapter 2. Depersonalizations: Modernism and Jewish Tradition

Modernist Depersonalizations

Fernando Pessoa: Depersonalization and Abulia

Hermann Hesse: Through Multiplicity Toward Unity

Impersonality in Brazilian Modernism

Clarice Lispector: A Writer, a Mystic, a Messianist

Chapter 3. Dialectics of Personhood: Infancy and Puberty

Telephone as a Synecdoche of the Dispositif

A Person as a Dispositif: Humanization as Banishment from Being

Human Life as a Dialectic of Personalization and Depersonalization

Fetal and Infant Life as an Impersonal State

Domestication of Child, Animal, and God

Maturing as the Emergence of a Person from an Impersonal Background

Chapter 4. Crisis of Personhood: Horror and Ecstasy

Home and Ontological Security

The Vegetal Space of Impersonality

Freedom and Beauty

The Horror of Impersonality: Lispector and the “Heart of Darkness”

The Ascetic-Mystical Experience: From “the Self” Toward Nothingness

Layers and Seduction

Biological Life as an Object of Disgust

Chapter 5. Impersonalist Ethics: Toward Solidarity with the Bare Life

The Political Dimension of the Bare Life

Encounter with the Cockroach: Approaching the Bare Life

Literary Study of Conditions for “Affirmative Biopolitics”

Messianic Coda: “We shall be inhuman…”

Bibliography

Index

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