“J.”, or: the Black Holes of Hillis le mal

This essay examines Hillis Miller's recent critical use of terms from physics (black holes) and mathematics (the zero) as a theoretical strategy that recasts our understanding of his performative aims. It proposes an other Miller to the familiar explicator and pedagogic disseminator of literary deconstruction he is often taken for, putting his work in contact not only with Benjaminian practices but coming horizons in global esthetic politics.     

Mastering authority: J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

J.M. Coetzee’s fiction has, from its inception, parodied language which claims to speak as the public use of reason. Diary of a Bad Year departs from this position to some degree by offering a series of public reflections on the times; however, these reflections are embedded within a narrative structure which disallows us from taking them at face value. Such narrative framing raises the question of authority: not only the authority of the reflections themselves, but the authority of the voice and the voice in the text. The relationship between fiction and the public sphere is such that fiction foregrounds the problem of authority in public discourse and seeks to capture the position of authority through heightened forms of mimesis and self‐consciousness.