Passive Voices (On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech)

Addresses the question of how language affects the subject of speech through readings of confessional, philosophical, and fictional writings.

At least since Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, there has been talk of the pathos of language, of language as "symbols of the affections in the soul." The way these affections are registered, however, suggests that they are themselves structured like language. For Aristotle and others, language is suffered before any sense can be voiced. The pathos of lang...