Journal articles on the topic 'Neo-Hebrew'

This article describes the innovative dmi construction—doubly-marked interrogative—of colloquial Modern Hebrew, in which a question is doubly marked as interrogative. A dmi consists of two parts: (i) an ordinary question, which we call the content question, and (ii) an additional wh-phrase, the attitude marker, which embeds the content question, and whose function is to assign it additional illocutionary force, typically that of rejecting a presupposition salient in the discourse. The article suggests that the dmi was (re-)innovated in Modern Hebrew as a result of contact with Modern Arabic and Neo-Aramaic dialects. It may have been previously innovated in an earlier stage of Hebrew due to its contact with Aramaic.

Abstract Oral transmission of the Tannaitic Hebrew double genitive vocative ribbono šella‘olam ‘Master of the Universe’ maintains the definite article in the Hebrew component of two ancient Jewish vernaculars: Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic in Djerba. The textual transmission of the phrase, changed it graphemically from the Tannaitic original רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁלָּעוֹלָם into medieval רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם. The new spelling was the source of its final formation in Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish, without the definite article. The decategorialization of this double genitive phrase from a theocentric vocative to a semantically bleached interjection in these Jewish languages, especially Yiddish, was the point of departure for its meaning and pragmatic function in nascent spoken Modern Hebrew, as evidence from Mendele’s bilingual oeuvre indicates. It may be tentatively proposed that further grammaticalization and broadening of this substrate component structure-function pairing may have led to the emergence of a new category of analogically constructed discourse markers in Modern Hebrew.

Abstract Oral transmission of the Tannaitic Hebrew double genitive vocative ribbono šella‘olam ‘Master of the Universe’ maintains the definite article in the Hebrew component of two ancient Jewish vernaculars: Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic in Djerba. The textual transmission of the phrase, changed it graphemically from the Tannaitic original רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁלָּעוֹלָם into medieval רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם. The new spelling was the source of its final formation in Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish, without the definite article. The decategorialization of this double genitive phrase from a theocentric vocative to a semantically bleached interjection in these Jewish languages, especially Yiddish, was the point of departure for its meaning and pragmatic function in nascent spoken Modern Hebrew, as evidence from Mendele’s bilingual oeuvre indicates. It may be tentatively proposed that further grammaticalization and broadening of this substrate component structure-function pairing may have led to the emergence of a new category of analogically constructed discourse markers in Modern Hebrew.

AbstractThe theophany in Psalm xviii includes, together with the storm imagery, images of wings/flight and bows/arrows in a combination appearing nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible Hebrew (HB). On the other hand, in the iconography of the ancient Near East, these motifs are often part of a divine apparition, especially to a king in battle. One of the major examples is the winged disc, which in many cases contains the image of a god armed with a bow. We present a number of examples of the motifs of winged gods and bows from Egyptian and Neo-Assyrian sources, both iconographic and textual. In particular, the Neo-Assyrian parallels relate to the theme of the divine glory, kbd, Akk. melammu, and the divine empowerment of the king which assures his victory in battle. In the context of these examples, the theophany (vss. 8-18) and the battle scene (vss. 30, 33-43) can be understood as two perspectives on a single event involving God and the king. This approach leads us to suggest an emendation in the difficult verses, 35-36.

The Book of Isaiah is a wonderful work that is preserved from antiquity both in its Hebrew and its Greek version. It is a history written and reworked by many generations, covering the following periods: the Assyrian period (ca. 911–605 B.C.E.), the Neo-Babylonian period (ca. 625–539 B.C.E.), and the Persian period (ca. 550–333 B.C.E.).1

Abstract In the 10th/11th century, Arabic became both the vernacular and literary language of the Samaritan community, along with the two languages of the liturgy: Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic; Samaritan Neo Hebrew was also employed at this time mainly for the composition of religious poems. Together with the introduction of the Arabic language, the Samaritans started to use the Arabic script, along with the Samaritan Hebrew formal and cursive scripts. In comparison with the use of the Arabic script, the Samaritan Hebrew script served mostly for more sacred texts or was employed in order to mark certain textual passages with a higher degree of sacredness. Allography of Arabic in Samaritan Hebrew letters is attested in Samaritan manuscripts since the beginning of the 13th century, although it was introduced most probably at an earlier date. This allography is employed mainly for the Arabic translation of the Samaritan Torah, for the Arabic translations of prayers, and for Samaritan Hebrew or Samaritan Aramaic quotes in Arabic texts. The replacement of Arabic by Modern Israeli Hebrew as the primary vernacular among the Samaritans living in the State of Israel led to a revival of Samaritan Hebrew allography for Arabic texts in the 20th century, mainly in festival poems in Arabic language, which are performed at certain occasions, although not all congregants are still familiar with the Arabic language and script. A close analysis demonstrates that Samaritan Hebrew allography of Arabic is the result of an intense contact between two scribal cultures, both of which were well established amongst the Samaritans. The allographic use of the Samaritan Hebrew script for writing Arabic texts originally did not aim to make these texts more accessible to Samaritan readers, but rather was employed to mark Arabic texts as belonging to the realm of the sacred.

Arguing that history writing is a dialectical process fusing ideological agenda and political developments with historical evidence, the author analyzes the two major transitions experienced by the Israeli historiography of the 1948 war: from the classical Zionist narrative to the "New History" of the late 1980s, and from the latter to the emergence of a "neo-Zionist" trend as of 2000. While describing the characteristics of these trends, the author shows how they are linked to concurrent political developments. Most of the article is devoted to an examination of the neo-Zionist historians who have emerged in recent years, based on their previously untranslated Hebrew works.

The biblical Book of Naḥūm explains the way HaShem (The Name) deals with Evil. An inner biblical interpretive technique is used to reach this meaning, a technique inconsistent with the method of the rest of the Hebrew Bible. As a prophetic song, the Book of Naḥūm rightly prophesies the pending downfall of the Assyrian Empire. In the light of the story of the Jews of Kurdistan together with a careful reading of Naḥūm’s book, there is enough evidence to assert that the Book has passed through oral translations and various oral recitations. Thus, as oral literature, Naḥūm’s “book,” in actuality a long poem in three sections has been transmitted not only in the original Hebrew but also through Kurmanji Kurdish and neo-Aramaic translations before the final Hebrew redaction took place. Accordingly, the biblical text throws light on not only an episode in ancient history, but also on the antiquity of the Kurmanji dialect and its vernaculars.

Abstract The word מסכנות used in the phrase ערי מסכנות “store cities” is commonly considered a loanword from the Neo-Assyrian word maškattu, “account, deposit, storehouse.” The current loan hypothesis does not account for the difficulties of the Akkadian evidence and does not take into consideration a gloss in Amarna letter no. 306. This gloss shows that the Canaanite scribes of the Late Bronze Age were familiar with the Akkadian plural form maškanātu and used it with the meaning “granaries, storage areas.” This technical term was borrowed into a Canaanite dialect and was subsequently transmitted to Biblical Hebrew as מסכנות.

Abstract In the present article we aim to describe the distribution and functions of preposed and postposed paronomastic infinitives in literary and spoken varieties of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). In the first part, the syntax and the function(s) of constructions involving a paronomastic infinitive will be described from a typological point of view. Syntactic and functional variation of NENA paronomastic infinitives largely corresponds to what is found in other Semitic languages, as well as in many languages belonging to other families. In the second part of the article we will address the rendering of Biblical Hebrew and Classical Syriac paronomastic infinitives in NENA Bible translations and offer a survey of various constructions found in spoken varieties and in the language of early Christian Neo-Aramaic poetry.

AbstractIn this essay, I examine Hermann Cohen's and Abraham Joshua Heschel's respective accounts of the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which contend with the Protestant biblical criticism of their day. Their accounts of the prophets are of central significance for their philosophies of Judaism, which mirror and oppose each other. This Auseinandersetzung addresses the often neglected topic of Jewish responses to German-Protestant biblical criticism and stresses the cogency of Heschel's thought. Additionally, examining Cohen and Heschel together problematizes the polarization between theocentrism and neo-humanism currently dominating the landscape of modern Jewish thought.

Abstract Jewish Neo-Aamaic translations of the Bible were orally transmitted from generation to generation by local teachers to disciples. The translations were adjusted for the various dialects (Zakho, Urmia, etc.), and even from one teacher to another according to their memory and knowledge, but certain principles remain more or less prevalent. Thus, the translations are normally quite rigid, reflecting the Hebrew syntax almost word forword. However, insome cases they deviate from this principle for euphemistic and other reasons, often following in the steps of the ancient Aramaic Targums. This may be a direct continuous tradition reflected in the translations of other Jewish languagesas well, but could be also via popular commentaries such as Rashi's.

Abstract This article adduces Akkadian idioms to explain three formulations in 2 Kgs 17:9-11 which differ from the standard Deuteronomistic phraseology employed in 2 Kgs 17:7-23. The awkward Hebrew phrase ויחפאו. . . דברים is interpreted as a loan from Akkadian hepû + dibbu = “to break an agreement”, the following expression דברים אשר לא כן compared with the Akkadian dibbu ša lā kinnu = “disloyal talk”, and the ending of v. 11 understood in the light of an Akkadian idiom. On this analysis, vv. 9-11 appear to be composed of two strata, the original core—composed during the Neo-Assyrian period—and a later Deuteronomistic redaction which reinterpreted the initial text. The former can be understood as a very early theological response to the destruction of Samaria and Assyrian imperial claims regarding its fall which utilizes Neo-Assyrian covenantal terminology to describe the relationship between the God of Israel and His people.

Abstract The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Zakho is a highly endangered dialect of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic which was spoken by the Jews of Zakho (northern-Iraq) up to the 1950s, when virtually all of them left Iraq for Israel. Thanks to documentation efforts which started in the ’40s at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as the interest of native speakers, we possess a rich textual documentation of this dialect today (Cohen, 2012; Y. Sabar, 2002; Avinery, 1988). These resources, together with recently conducted fieldwork, are used in order to analyze the linguistic status of the verbal personal indices in this dialect, following the concepts presented by Bresnan & Mchombo (1987) as well as Corbett (2003). For each person marker, its status as a pronominal affix or as an agreement marker is established. The synchronic situation is compared with the known historic situation in older strata of Aramaic, such as Classical Syriac. The resulting analysis shows that the same apparent person marker may behave differently in different syntactic environments. Another conclusion is that there is no clear-cut dichotomy between pronominal affixes and agreement markers, as transitional cases exist.

AbstractThe characteristically Isaianic term אליל for other gods does not have its roots in an earlier Semitic adjective, as has often been thought. Rather, it was adopted from Akkadian Illil/Enlil into Hebrew because it reflected the rhetoric of Neo-Assyrian rulers. As in Akkadian, it was used in an extended sense to refer to major divinities; and it was retained in the Isaianic tradition presumably because it was a useful term for »false gods«—readily comprehensible even as a new coinage, yet distinct from the terms used for Yhwh. As anti-idol polemics became increasingly prominent and vicious, the latest Isaianic tradents avoided אליל, preferring more overt terms for idols. Eventually, it came to be reanalyzed as an adjective and used as a mere insult: »worthless«.

The term morphological reversal describes the situation where the members of a morphological opposition switch their functions in some context (as with Hebrew gender marking, where -Ø~-a marks masculine~feminine with adjectives but feminine~masculine with numerals). There is a long tradition of polemic against the notion that morphology can encode systematic reversals, and an equally long tradition of reintroducing them under different names (e.g. polarity, exchange rules or morphosyntactic toggles). An examination of some unjustly neglected examples (number in Nehan, aspect in Tübatulabal, tense in Trique and argument marking in Neo-Aramaic) confirms the existence of morphological reversal, particularly as a mechanism of language change. This is strong evidence for the separateness of morphological paradigms from the features that they encode.

Aron Shai, China and Israel: Chinese, Jews; Beijing, Jerusalem (1890–2018) (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019), 270 pp. Hardback, $90.00. Paperback, $29.95.Raffaella A. Del Sarto, Israel under Siege: The Politics of Insecurity and the Rise of the Israeli Neo-Revisionist Right (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 298 pp. Paperback, $26.94.Dan Tamir, Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922–1942 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 210 pp. Hardback, $99.99.Alan Dowty, Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine: Two Worlds Collide (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019), 312 pp. Hardback, $65.00.Guy Ben-Porat and Fany Yuval, Policing Citizens: Minority Policy in Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 250 pp. Hardback, $89.99.Deborah Golden, Lauren Erdreich, and Sveta Roberman, Mothering, Education and Culture: Russian, Palestinian and Jewish Middle-Class Mothers in Israeli Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 225 pp. Hardback, $114.25.

This article analyzes the changes in drama series in the first five decades (1966–2016) of Israeli children’s television. Based on interviews with 27 central producers, this cultural-historical study seeks to explain the significance attributed to children’s drama over the years. Early children’s drama series in Israel were instructional or educational, but they also sought to control the representation of childhood under the direct supervision of the state. The neo-liberal privatization process in Israeli society led to the creation of locally produced, Hebrew-speaking daily dramas on private channels for children. In the multiscreen environment created by the age of multichannel television and digital media, original Israeli daily drama shows functioned as a central branding tool for children’s channels. The article contends that these shows became one of the producers’ key answers to the changes in children’s viewing habits and, more particularly, linear television’s strategy for success in a world of multiple online screens.

AbstractMany difficulties and perplexities in Isa 28:1-22 can be resolved by reading the text as a condemnation of the Judeans’ seeking protection from Assyria by means of a covenant with one of Egypt’s major deities, the mother goddess Mut. Her close association with the Egyptian throne would have given her the “right” to make a covenant; her protective aspect explains why those in distress would seek her; her motherhood explains why the Judeans who seek her are characterized as children; the prominence of drunkenness and flowers in her cult explains the appearance of those elements in Isaiah 28. She also was associated with the underworld as a protectress of the dead, and it is likely that her name sounded very much like the Hebrew word , “death”, making Isaiah’s double entendre a natural play on words. Other features of the text such as the overwhelming flood refer to the Neo-Assyrians; Isaiah warns that Egypt and Mut cannot protect Judah from their assault.

AbstractRecent research demonstrates that maternal grief functions paradigmatically to epitomize despair and sorrow in the Hebrew Bible. These literary uses of maternal grief reinforce the stereotype of womanhood, defined by devotion to children and anguish at their loss. In 1–2 Kings, narratives about unnamed bereaved mothers are used politically to create a contrast with named biblical queens who lose their sons but never grieve for them. Although 1–2 Kings names the queen mothers alongside the male rulers, these mothers have no agency or when they do, they act more like men than women. Neo-Assyrian inscriptions attest the masculinity of royal female power, and this article argues that conceptions of royal female power in Judah were similar. By contrasting the masculine queens with stereotyped “real men” and “real women,” traditional gender performances literarily overcome the institution of queenship. While the queens are polemicized, unnamed mothers emerge as the female heroes of Kings. Royal female power is demoted beneath reproductive ability and emotional responses to children, while the gender fluidity of royal power is circumscribed.

Abstract Verbs constitute one of the basic building blocks of a clause, setting the structure of arguments and expressing the relationships among nouns in various thematic roles. In general terms, verbs are lexical items expressing verb-oriented notions such as activities, processes, and states. In morphology-rich languages, the syntactic and lexical roles of verbs are mediated by typologically-oriented morphological means. The current Special Issue contrasts the structure and functions of verbs in languages from two morphologically rich, yet typologically different families. The articles in the Special Issue present spoken and written aspects of verbs in usage and development in German (a Germanic language) on the one hand, in Hebrew, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic (Semitic languages), on the other. From a theoretical linguistic perspective, we ask how the different typological features of these languages affect the function of verbs in sentences, and from a psycholinguistic perspective, we ask how typological differences affect the processing of verbs in the mature minds of adults and in the developing minds of children.

A long standing tradition posits an opposition between the Jews and the ideals and reality of medieval chivalry (i.e., before 1492). The article argues against such generalizations. It begins by noting the research on chivalric imaginaire amongst Jews in Franco-German areas. In the case of Hispanic Jews, oral literature, particularly ballads, includes points of contact with Libros de caballería. Even (neo-) Aramaic mystical texts from thirteenth-century Castile use images and metaphors from chivalric literature. Culturally hybrid representations are also relevant, in specific visual cases such as the iconography of the Arragel Bible - and also its texts - or the texts of the (probably converso) poet Pero Ferruz. Late medieval Hebrew MS illuminations show the Hispano-Jewish patrons’ taste for the representation of knights and scenes of knightly life. Fragments from Inquisition and other archival evidence confirm the taste for chivalric literature amongst Iberian Jews. Material culture from late medieval Spain also supports the article’s claim in various ways - Jewish artisans are involved in crafting memorable items of knightly accoutrement; and towards the later decades of the fifteenth century there are attempts to incorporate Jews into urban caballería.

Os deslocamentos populacionais decorrentes de crises são problemas hodiernos que requerem a adoção de polá­ticas públicas e a constante reafirmação dos Direitos Humanos e dos valores da cidadania. Na Antiguidade, O Imperialismo Assá­rio constitui um dos exemplos que permitem a observação do fenômeno da crise migratória. O Antigo Israel foi um dos povos submetidos pelos assá­rios ao desterramento. Este artigo analisa as polá­ticas imperialistas assá­rias a partir da documentação textual e material, e relaciona essa documentação com as referências ao exá­lio na Bá­blia Hebraica.Palavras-chave: Exá­lio. Império Neoassá­rio. Antigo Israel. THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AND ISRAEL: imperialism and exileAbstract: Population displacements due to crises are current situations that require the adoption of public policies and constant reaffirmation of Human Rights and the values of citizenship. In Antiquity, Assyrian imperialism is one of the examples that allow us to observe the phenomenon of the migratory crisis. The Ancient Israel was one of the peoples submitted by the Assyrians to the exile. This article analyzes Assyrian imperialist policies from textual and material documentation and relates this documentation to the references to exile in the Hebrew Bible.Keywords: Exile. Neo-Assyrian Empire. Ancient Israel. EL IMPERIO NEOASSáRIO E ISRAEL: imperialismo y exilioResumen: Los desplazamientos poblacionales derivados de crisis son problemas cotidianos que requieren la adopción de polá­ticas públicas y la constante reafirmación de los Derechos Humanos y de los valores de la ciudadaná­a. En la Antigá¼edad, el imperialismo asirio constituye uno de los ejemplos que permiten la observación del fenómeno de la crisis migratoria. El Antiguo Israel fue uno de los pueblos sometidos por los asirios al destierro. Este artá­culo analiza las polá­ticas imperialistas asirias a partir de la documentación textual y material, y relaciona esa documentación con las referencias al exilio presentes en la Biblia Hebrea.Palabras clave: Exilio. Imperio Neoasá­rio. Antiguo Israel.

Astrology is a pseudo-science based on the assumption that the well-being of humankind, and its health in particular, is influenced in a constant and predictable fashion by the stars and other stellar bodies. Its origins can probably be traced back to Mesopotamia of the 3rd millennium BC and was particularly popular in Graeco-Roman times and the Medieval Era. Astrology in Western countries has always differed from that in the Far East, and while it largely lost its popularity in the West after the Renaissance, it still remains of considerable significance in countries like China and Tibet. Astrology took on a prominent medical component in the Old Babylonian Era (1900-1600 BC) when diseases were first attributed to stellar bodies and associated gods. In the Neo-Babylonian Era (6th century BC) the zodiac came into being: an imaginary belt across the skies (approximately 16o wide) which included the pathways of the sun, moon and planets, as perceived from earth. The zodiac belt was divided into 12 equal parts (“houses” or signs), 6 above the horizon and 6 below. The signs became associated with specific months, illnesses and body parts – later with a number of other objects like planets, minerals (e.g. stones) and elements of haruspiction (soothsaying, mantic, gyromancy). In this way the stellar objects moving through a zodiac “house” became associated with a multitude of happenings on earth, including illness. The macrocosm of the universe became part of the human microcosm, and by studying the stars, planets, moon, etcetera the healer could learn about the incidence, cause, progress and treatment of disease. He could even predict the sex and physiognomy of unborn children. The art of astrology and calculations involved became very complex. The horoscope introduced by the 3rd century BC (probably with Greek input) produced a measure of standardisation: a person’s position within the zodiac would be determined by the date of birth, or date of onset of an illness or other important incident, on which information was needed. Egyptian astrological influence was limited but as from the 5th century BC onwards, Greek (including Hellenistic) input became prominent. In addition to significant contributions to astronomy, Ptolemy made a major contribution to astrology as “science” in his Tetrabiblos. Rational Greek medicine as represented by the Hippocratic Corpus did not include astrology, and although a number of physicians did make use of astrology, it almost certainly played a minor role in total health care. Astrology based on the Babylonian-Greek model also moved to the East, including India where it became integrated with standard medicine. China, in the Far East, developed a unique, extremely complex variety of astrology, which played a major role in daily life, including medicine. During Medieval times in the West, astrology prospered when the original Greek writings (complemented by Arabic and Hebrew contributions) were translated into Latin. In the field of medicine documents falsely attributed to Hippocrates and Galen came into circulation, boosting astrology; in the young universities of Europe it became taught as a science. It was, however, opposed by the theologians who recognised a mantic element of mysticism, and it lost further support when during the Renaissance, the spuriousness of the writings attributed to the medical icons, Hippocrates and Galen, became evident. Today Western standard medicine contains no astrology, but in countries like China and Tibet it remains intricately interwoven with health care. In common language we have a heritage of words with an astrological origin, like “lunatic” (a person who is mentally ill), “ill-starred”, “saturnine” (from Saturn, the malevolent plant) and “disaster” (from dis, bad, and astra, star).

Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebrón) was perhaps the greatest Neo-Platonist in the medieval Arabic philosophic tradition, and the greatest medieval Hebrew poet. In the following discussion, the author studies a short poem (Ahabtikha: "I Have Loved You") from Ibn Gabirol's classic philosophy work Fons Vitae, and he tries to clarify some of the poem's enigmas. The poem does relate to the teachings of the Fons Vitae, but does so in a nonphilosophic manner, making no use of philosophic terminology or argument.

Within a literary ontology, YHWH in the Hebrew Bible is technically also a fictional entity or object. In Hebrew Bible scholarship, a variety of philosophical issues surrounding fiction have received sustained and in-depth attention. However, the mainstream research on these matters tends to focus on the philosophical foundations of or backgrounds to a particular literary theory, rather than on metaphysical puzzles as encountered in the philosophy of fiction proper. To fill this gap, the present article seeks to provide a meta-theoretical overview of the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on the metaphysics of fictional objects. Three views (and their sub-currents) are discussed, namely possibilism, (neo-)Meinongianism and (literary) creationism. Each view’s theory is introduced and critically appropriated with reference to what is implied to be an answer to the question of what exactly the biblical character YHWH can meaningfully be said to be in the context of the metaphysics of fictional objects. In this way, the present study also goes beyond the traditional concern with the nature of God in Old Testament theology.

Abstract The paper studies the nature of the interplay between viewpoint aspect and tense in the temporal systems of Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, focusing on the suffixed verb form qaṭal and on the participial verb form qoṭel common to both. The examination of these temporal systems is couched in a neo-reichenbachian framework, taking the categories of viewpoint aspect and tense to consist of relations between temporal intervals (also known as the “two dimensional theory of tense”). It follows from this framework that viewpoint aspect and tense are encoded in any given temporal system, and languages differ in whether they contrastively mark tenses and/or aspects. When only one of the categories is morphologically marked, it is assumed that the other marks a default value. In the current context, it will be shown that viewpoint aspect properties of the verbal forms remain essentially unchanged over the two periods: qoṭel expressed, and still does, imperfective viewpoint aspect, with some characteristics of a progressive, whereas qaṭal expressed, and still does, a default viewpoint aspect that is interpreted as perfective according to the lexical aspectual properties of the underlying VP. In contrast, the properties of the tense categories in the systems have undergone a significant change: in Biblical Hebrew, the category of tense, in these particular forms, but possibly also more generally in the system, mark only a default value where the two temporal intervals, R and S, are not ordered in any specific manner, but rather present a temporal overlap; in Modern Hebrew, the category of tense contrasts temporal values, where R and S are clearly ordered with respect to each other: overlap, precedence. It will be suggested that this state of affairs is correlated with the (im)possibility of the forms to express narrative progression. Given that narrative progression involves update of R, this is not possible when the temporal relation between R and S is one of general overlap, blocking R progression. In Biblical Hebrew, narrative progression is achieved via the sequential w-forms, which have later disappeared from the system.

This article presents the Hebrew translation of the introduction and the letter alef of the first Judaeo-Arabic Biblical dictionary extant, the Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Alfāẓ, composed by the Karaite scholar David Ben Abraham al-Fāsī (fl. second half of the 10th century), ably edited by the late S.L. Skoss. The dictionary is quite comprehensive. Even if one does not take the introduction into consideration, the first volume contains no less than 600 pages, the second more than 750. The introduction itself deals intensively with various aspects of the structure of the dictionary. The main part of the dictionary is divided into 22 sections, reflecting the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Every section opens with an introduction characterizing the letter in question. The following main part is theoretically subdivided into 22 subsections, exhibiting the combination of the letter of the section dealt with, with one letter of Hebrew alphabet. Since, however, not every combination is attested, there are in fact, as a rule, less than 22 subsections. Every subsection is introduced by a list of the verses to be dealt with, followed by a thorough lexical and grammatical analysis, which forms the main body of the dictionary. Yet, the correspondence between the examples in the list and the analysis is not always clear. And one wonders what the real function of the list can be. The dictionary is based, in accordance with the period in which it was written, on the bi-radical and mono-radical system. There is no doubt that it is only the tri-radical principle that enables a clear and all-comprising analysis of the Hebrew roots. On the other hand, the bi-radical and mono-radical system does not artificially separate related weak roots. It was because of this relationship that Hebrew grammarians adhered to the bi-radical and mono-radical principle, and it was only through the influence of Arabic, in which the tri-radical structure of the verb is prominent that the tri-radical principle was adopted in Hebrew grammar. Being one of the first Judaeo-Arabic dictionaries, it is not surprising that the structure of subdivisions, containing lexical and grammatical analysis of the material, is sometimes ambiguous, at times because of the conciseness of expression. In the wake of Biblical prose, in which main clauses opening with copulative waw are very frequent, our dictionary tends to introduce main clauses with copulative waw, whereas classical Arabic utilizes fa in this environment. On the other hand, al-Fāsī frequently applies asyndetic clauses, both coordinated and subordinated ones. Like Judaeo-Arabic literature in general, our dictionary too is written in Middle Arabic, in which post-Classical Arabic, Neo-Arabic and also pseudo-corrections alternate. Sometimes al-Fāsī's Arabic is influenced by Hebrew, as when, in the wake of Hebrew hāyā, Arabic kāna governs its predicate with the preposition la. Sometimes the translation of Biblical verses is so literal as to be unintelligible; accordingly, al-Fāsī considers himself obliged to add another translation in a more comprehensible Arabic. On the other hand, al-Fāsī's understanding of Biblical Hebrew is often influenced by Arabic. Thus, when analyzing 'eshekh, he interprets it, as well as the verb shkhkh, by comparing the Hebrew verb shākhan (exhibiting shkh as the first part of its root), yet he attributes to it peculiar meanings of the parallel Arabic sakan, viz, 'to calm down' as well as its late signification ‘to be hidden'.

A political minimalism? That would obviously go against the grain of our current political ideology → in fact, we are in an era of political maximalisation (Roland Barthes 200, arrow in original).Barthes’ comment is found in the ‘Annex’ to his 1978 lecture course The Neutral. Despite the three decade difference I don’t things have changed that much, certainly not insofar as academic debate about the cultural and social is concerned. At conferences I regularly hear the demand that the speaker or speakers account for the ‘political intent’, ‘worth’ or ‘utility’ of their work, or observe how speakers attempt to pre-empt and disarm such calls through judicious phrasing and citing. Following his diagnosis Barthes (201-206) proceeds to write under the title ‘To Give Leave’. Here he notes the incessant demand placed upon us, as citizens, as consumers, as representative cultural subjects and as biopolitical entities and, in this context, as academics to have and to communicate our allegiances, views and opinions. Echoing the acts, (or rather the ‘non-acts’), of Melville’s Bartleby, Barthes describes the scandalous nature of suspending the obligation of holding views; the apparent immorality of suspending the obligation of being interested, engaged, opinionated, committed – even if one only ever suspends provisionally, momentarily even. For the length of a five thousand word essay perhaps. In this short, unfortunately telegraphic and quite speculative essay I want pause to consider a few gestures or figures of ‘suspension’, ‘decline’ and ‘remaining aside’. What follows is in three parts. First a comment on the nature of the ‘demand to communicate’ identified by Barthes and its links to longer running moral and practical imperatives within Western understandings of the subject, the social and the political. Second, the most substantial section but still an all too brief account of the apparent ‘passivity’ of the narrator of Imre Kertész’s novel Fatelessness and the ways in which the novel may be read as a reflection on the nature of agency and determination. Third, a very brief conclusion, the question directly; what politics or what apprehension of politics, could a reflection on stillness and its ‘political minimalism’ offer? 1.For Barthes, (in 1978), one of the factors defining the contemporary intellectual scene was the way in which “politics invades all phenomena, economic, cultural, ethical” coupled with the “radicalization” of “political behaviors” (200), perhaps most notably in the arrogance of political discourse as it assumes the place of a master discourse. Writing in 1991 Bill Readings identified a similar phenomenon. For Readings the category of the political and politically inspired critique were operating by encircling their objects within a presupposed “universal language of political significance into which one might translate everything according to its effectivity”, an approach which has the effect of always making “the political […] the bottom line, the last instance where meaning can be definitively asserted” (quoted in Clark 3) or, we may add, realized. There is, of course, much that could be said here, not least concerning the significant differences in context, (between, for example, the various forms of revolutionary Marxism, Communism and Maoism which seem to preoccupy Barthes and the emancipatory identity and cultural politics which swept through literature departments in the US and beyond in the last two decades of the twentieth century). However it is also possible to suggest that a general grammar and, moreover, a general acceptance of a telos of the political persists.Barthes' (204-206) account of ‘political maximalisation’ is accompanied by a diagnosis of its productivist virility, (be it, in 1978, on the part of the increasingly reduced revolutionary left or the burgeoning neo-liberal right). The antithesis, or, rather, the outside of such an arrangement or frame would not be another political program but rather a certain stammering, a lassitude or dilatoriness. A flaccidness even; “a devirilized image” wherein from the point of view of the (political) actor or critic, “you are demoted to the contemptible mass of the undecided of those who don’t know who to vote for: old, lost ladies whom they brutalize: vote however you want, but vote” (Barthes 204). Hence Barthes is not suggesting a counter-move, a radical refusal, a ‘No’ shouted back to the information saturated market society. What is truly scandalous he suggests, is not opposition or refusal but the ‘non-reply’. What is truly scandalous, roughish even, is the decline or deferral and so the provisional suspension of the choice (and the blackmail) of the ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the ‘this’ or the ‘that’, the ‘with us’ or ‘against us’.In Literature and Evil Georges Bataille concludes his essay on Kafka with a comment on such a decline. According to Bataille, the reason why Kafka remains an ambivalent writer for critics, (and especially for those who would seek to enrol his work to political ends), lays precisely in his constant withdrawal; “There was nothing he [Kafka] could have asserted, or in the name of which he could have spoken. What he was, which was nothing, only existed to the extent in which effective activity condemned him” (167). ‘Effective activity’ refers, contextually, to a certain form of Communism but more broadly to the rationalization or systematization intrinsic to any political program, political programs (or ideologies) as such, be they communist, liberal or libertarian. At least insofar as, as implied above, the political is taken to coincide with a certain metaphysics and morality of action and the consequent linking of freedom to work, (a factor common to communist, fascist and liberal political programs), and so to the labour of the progressive self-realization and achievement of the self, the autos or ipse (see Derrida 6-18). Be it via, for example, Marx’s account of human’s intrinsic ‘capacity for work’ (Arbeitskraft), Heidegger’s account of necessary existential (and ultimately communal) struggle (Kampf), or Weber’s diagnoses of the (Protestant/bourgeois) liberal project to realize human potentiality (see also Agamben Man without Content; François 1-64). Hence what is ‘evil’ in Kafka is not any particular deed but the deferral of deeds; his ambivalence or immorality in the eyes of certain critics being due to the question his writing poses to “the ultimate authority of action” (Bataille 153) and so to the space beyond action onto which it opens. What could this space of ‘worklessness’ or ‘unwork’ look like? This non-virile, anti-heroic space? This would not be a space of ‘inaction’, (a term still too dependent, albeit negatively, on action), but of ‘non-action’; of ‘non-productive’ or non-disclosive action. That is to say, and as a first attempt at definition, ‘action’ or ‘praxis’, if we can still call it that, which does not generate or bring to light any specific positive content. As a way to highlight the difficulties and pitfalls, (at least with certain traditions), which stand in the way of thinking such a space, we may highlight Giorgio Agamben’s comments on the widespread coincidence of a metaphysics of action with the determination of both the subject, its teleology and its orientation in the world:According to current opinion, all of man’s [sic] doing – that of the artist and the craftsman as well as that of the workman and the politician – is praxis – manifestation of a will that produces a concrete effect. When we say that man has a productive status on earth, we mean, that the status of his dwelling on the earth is a practical one […] This productive doing now everywhere determines the status of man on earth – man understood as the living being (animal) that works (laborans), and, in work, produces himself (Man without Content 68; 70-71 original emphasis).Beyond or before practical being then, that is to say before and beyond the determination of the subject as essentially or intrinsically active and engaged, another space, another dwelling. Maybe nocturnal, certainly one with a different light to that of the day; one not gathered in and by the telos of the ipse or the turning of the autos, an interruption of labour, an unravelling. Remaining still, unravelling together (see Harrison In the absence).2.Kertész’s novel Sorstalanság was first published in his native Hungary in 1975. It has been translated into English twice, in 1992 as Fateless and in 2004 as Fatelessness. Fatelessness opens in Budapest on the day before György Köves’ – the novel’s fourteen year old narrator – father has to report for ‘labour service’. It goes on to recount Köves’ own detention and deportation and the year spent in the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald and Zeitz. During this period Köves’ health declines, gradually at first and then rapidly to a moment of near death. He survives and the novel closes with his return to his home town. Köves is, as Kertész has put it in various interviews and as is made clear in the novel, a ‘non-Jewish Jew’; a non-practicing and non-believing Hungarian Jew from a largely assimilated family who neither reads nor speaks Hebrew or Yiddish. While Kertész has insisted that the novel is precisely that, a novel, a work of literature and not an autobiography, we should note that Kertész was himself imprisoned in Buchenwald and Zeitz when fourteen.Not without reservations but for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only one theme in the novel; determination and agency, or what Kertész calls ‘determinacy’. Writing in his journal Galley Boat-Log (Gályanapló) in May 1965 Kertész suggests ‘Novel of Fatelessness’ as a possible title for his work and then reflects on what he means by ‘fate’, the entry is worth quoting at length.The external determinacy, the stigma which constrains our life in a situation, an absurdity, in the given totalitarianism, thwarts us; thus, when we live out the determinacy which is doled out to us as a reality, instead of the necessity which stems from our own (relative) freedom – that is what I call fatelessness.What is essential is that our determinacy should always be in conflict with our natural views and inclinations; that is how fatelessness manifests itself in a chemically pure state. The two possible modes of protection: we transform into our determinacy (Kafka’s centipede), voluntarily so to say, and I that way attempt to assimilate our determinacy to our fate; or else we rebel against it, and so fall victim to our determinacy. Neither of these is a true solution, for in both cases we are obliged to perceive our determinacy […] as reality, whilst the determining force, that absurd power, in a way triumphs over us: it gives us a name and turns us into an object, even though we were born for other things.The dilemma of my ‘Muslim’ [Köves]: How can he construct a fate out of his own determinacy? (Galley Boat-Log 98 original emphasis).The dilemma of determinacy then; how can Köves, who is both determined by and superfluous to the Nazi regime, to wider Hungarian society, to his neighbours and to his family, gain some kind of control over his existence? Throughout Fatelessness people prove repeatedly unable to control their destinies, be it Köves himself, his father, his stepmother, his uncles, his friends from the oil refinery, or even Bandi Citrom, Köves’ mentor in the camps. The case of the ‘Expert’ provides a telescoped example. First appearing when Köves and his friends are arrested the ‘Expert’ is an imposing figure, well dressed, fluent in German and the director of a factory involved in the war effort (Fatelessness 50). Later at the brickworks, where the Jews who have been rounded up are being held prior to deportation, he appears more dishevelled and slightly less confident. Still, he takes the ‘audacious’ step of addressing a German officer directly (and receives some placatory ‘advice’ as his reward) (68-69). By the time the group arrives at the camp Köves has difficulty recognising him and without a word of protest, the ‘Expert’ does not pass the initial selection (88).Köves displays no such initiative with regard to his situation. He is reactive or passive, never active. For Köves events unfold as a series of situations and circumstances which are, he tells himself, essentially reasonable and to which he has to adapt and conform so that he may get on. Nothing more than “given situations with the new givens inherent in them” (259), as he explains near the end of the novel. As Köves' identity papers testify, his life and its continuation are the effect of arbitrary sets of circumstances which he is compelled to live through; “I am not alive on my own account but benefiting the war effort in the manufacturing industry” (29). In his Nobel lecture Kertész described Köves' situation:the hero of my novel does not live his own time in the concentration camps, for neither his time nor his language, not even his own person, is really his. He doesn’t remember; he exists. So he has to languish, poor boy, in the dreary trap of linearity, and cannot shake off the painful details. Instead of a spectacular series of great and tragic moments, he has to live through everything, which is oppressive and offers little variety, like life itself (Heureka! no pagination).Without any wilful or effective action on the part of the narrator and with only ‘the dreary trap of linearity’ where one would expect drama, plot, rationalization or stylization, Fatelessness can read as an arbitrarily punctuated series of waitings. Köves waiting for his father to leave, waiting in the customs shed, waiting at the brick works, waiting in train carriages, waiting on the ramp, waiting at roll call, waiting in the infirmary. Here is the first period of waiting described in the book, it is the day before his father’s departure and he is waiting for his father and stepmother as they go through the accounts at the family shop:I tried to be patient for a bit. Striving to think of Father, and more specifically the fact that he would be going tomorrow and, quite probably, I would not see him for a long time after that; but after a while I grew weary with that notion and then seeing as there was nothing else I could do for my father, I began to be bored. Even having to sit around became a drag, so simply for the sake of a change I stood up to take a drink of water from the tap. They said nothing. Later on, I also made my way to the back, between the planks, in order to pee. On returning I washed my hands at the rusty, tiled sink, then unpacked my morning snack from my school satchel, ate that, and finally took another drink from the tap. They still said nothing. I sat back in my place. After that, I got terribly bored for another absolute age (Fatelessness 9). It is interesting to consider exactly how this passage presages those that will come. Certainly this scene is an effect of the political context, his father and stepmother have to go through the books because of the summons to labour service and because of the racial laws on who may own and profit from a business. However, the specifically familial setting should not be overlooked, particularly when read alongside Kertész’s other novels where, as Madeleine Gustafsson writes, Communist dictatorship is “portrayed almost as an uninterrupted continuation of life in the camp – which in turn [...] is depicted as a continuation of the patriarchal dictatorship of a joyless childhood” (no pagination, see, for example, Kertész Kaddish). Time to turn back to our question; does Fatelessness provide an answer to the ‘dilemma of determinacy’? We should think carefully before answering. As Julia Karolle suggests, the composition of the novel and our search for a logic within itreveal the abuses that reason must endure in order to create any story or history about the Holocaust […]. Ultimately Kertész challenges the reader not to make up for the lack of logic in Fatelessness, but rather to consider the nature of its absence (92 original emphasis).Still, with this point in mind, (and despite what has been said above), the novel does contain a scene in which Köves appears to affirm his existence.In many respects the scene is the culmination of the novel. The camps have been liberated and Köves has returned to Budapest. Finding his father and step-mother’s apartment occupied by strangers he calls on his Aunt and Uncle Fleischmann and Uncle Steiner. The discussion which follows would repay a slower reading, however again for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only a few short excerpts. Köves suggests that everyone took their ‘steps’ towards the events which have unfolded and that prediction and retrospection are false perspectives which give the illusion of order and inevitability whereas, in reality, “everything becomes clear only gradually, sequentially over time, step-by-step” (Fatelessness 249): “They [his Uncles] too had taken their own steps. They too […] had said farewell to my father as if we had already buried him, and even later has squabbled about whether I should take the train or the suburban bus to Auschwitz” (260). Fleischmann and Steiner react angrily, claiming that such an understanding makes the ‘victims’ the ‘guilty ones’. Köves responds by saying that they do not understand him and asks they see that:It was impossible, they must try to understand, impossible to take everything away from me, impossible for me to be neither winner nor loser, for me not to be right and not to be mistaken that I was neither the cause nor effect of anything; they should try to see, I almost pleaded, that I could not swallow that idiotic bitterness, that I should merely be innocent (260-261).Karolle (93-94) suggests that Köves' discussion with his uncles marks the moment where he accepts and affirms his existence and, from this point on begins to take control of and responsibility. Hence for Karolle the end of the novel depicts an ‘authentic’ moment of self-affirmation as Köves steps forward and refuses to participate in “the factual historical narrative of Auschwitz, to forget what he knows, and to be unequivocally categorized as a victim of history” (95). In distinction to Karolle, Adrienne Kertzer argues that Köves' moment of self-affirmation is, in fact, one of self-deception. Rather than acknowledging that it was “inexplicable luck” and a “series of random acts” (Kertzer 122) which saved his life or that his near death was due to an accident of birth, Köves asserts his personal freedom. Hence – and following István Deák – Kertzer suggests that we should read Fatelessness as a satire, ‘a modern Candide’. A satire on the hope of finding meaning, be it personal or metaphysical, in such experiences and events, the closing scenes of the novel being an ironic reflection on the “desperate desire to see […] life as meaningful” (Kertzer 122). So, while Köves convinces himself of his logic his uncles say to each other “‘Leave him be! Can’t you see he only wants to talk? Let him talk! Leave him be!’ And talk I did, albeit possibly to no avail and even a little incoherently” (Fatelessness 259). Which are we to choose then? The affirmation of agency (with Karolle) or the diagnosis of determination (with Kertzer)? Karolle and Kertzer give insightful analyses, (and ones which are certainly not limited to the passages quoted above), however it seems to me that they move too quickly to resolve the ‘dilemma’ presented by Köves, if not of Fatelessness as a whole. Still, we have a little time before having to name and decide Köves’ fate. Kertész’s use of the word ‘hero’ to describe Köves above – ‘the hero of my novel…’ – is, perhaps, more than a little ironic. As Kertész asks (in 1966), how can there be a hero, how can one be heroic, when one is one’s ‘determinacies’? What sense does it make to speak of heroic actions if “man [sic] is no more than his situation”? (Galley Boat-Log 99). Köves’ time, his language, his identity, none are his. There is no place, no hidden reservoir of freedom, from which way he set in motion any efficacious action. All resources have already been corrupted. From Kertész’s journal (in 1975): “The masters of thought and ideologies have ruined my thought processes” (Galley Boat-Log 104). As Lawrence Langer has argued, the grammar of heroics, along with the linked terms ‘virtue’, ‘dignity’, ‘resistance’ ‘survival’ and ‘liberation’, (and the wider narrative and moral economies which these terms indicate and activate), do not survive the events being described. Here the ‘dilemma of determinacy’ becomes the dilemma of how to think and value the human outside or after such a grammar. How to think and value the human beyond a grammar of action and so beyond, as Lars Iyer puts it, “the equation of work and freedom that characterizes the great discourses of political modernity” (155). If this is possible. If such a grammar and equation isn’t too all pervasive, if something of the human still remains outside their economy. It may well be that our ability to read Fatelessness depends in large part on what we are prepared to forsake (see Langar 195). How to think the subject and a politics in contretemps, beyond or after the choice between determination or autonomy, passive or active, inaction or action, immoral or virtuous – if only for a moment? Kertész wonders, (in 1966), ”perhaps there is something to be savaged all the same, a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail that may be a sign of the will to live and still awakens sympathy” (Galley Boat-Log 99). Something, perhaps, which remains to be salvaged from the grammar of humanism, something that would not be reducible to context, to ‘determinacies’, and that, at the same time, does not add up to a (resurrected) agent. ‘A tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail’. The press release announcing that Kertész had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature states that “For Kertész the spiritual dimension of man lies in his inability to adapt to life” (The Swedish Academy no pagination). Despite the difficulties presented by the somewhat over-determined term ‘spiritual’, this line strikes me as remarkably perspicuous. Like Melville’s Bartleby and Bataille’s Kafka before him, Kertész’s Köves’ existence, insofar as he exists, is made up by his non-action. That is to say, his existence is defined not by his actions or his inaction, (both of which are purely reactive and functional), but rather by his irreducibility to either. As commentators and critics have remarked, (and as the quotes given from the text above hopefully illustrate), Köves has an oddly formal and neutral ‘voice’. Köves’ blank, frequently equivocal tone may be read as a sign of his immaturity, his lack of understanding and his naivety. However I would suggest that before such factors, what characterizes Köves’ mode of address is its reticence to assert or disclose. Köves speaks, he speaks endlessly, but he says nothing or almost nothing - ‘to no avail and even a little incoherently’. Hence where Karolle seeks to recover an ‘intoned self-consciousness’ and Kertzer the repressed determining context, we may find Köves' address. Where Karolle’s and Kertzer’s approaches seek in some way to repair Köves words, to supplement them with either an agency to-come or an awareness of a context and, in doing so, pull his words fully into the light, Köves, it seems to me, remains elusive. His existence, insofar as we may speak of it, lies in his ‘inability to adapt to life’. His reserves are not composed of hidden or recoverable sources of agency but in his equivocality, in the way he takes leave of and remains aside from the very terms of the dilemma. It is as if with no resources of his own, he has an echo existence. As if still remaining itself where a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail.3.Is this it? Is this what we are to be left with in a ‘political minimalism’? It would seem more resignation or failure, turning away or quietism, the conceit of a beautiful soul, than any type of recognisable politics. On one level this is correct, however any such suspension or withdrawal, this moment of stillness where we are, is only ever a moment. However it is a moment which indicates a certain irreducibility and as such is, I believe, of great significance. Great significance, (or better ‘signifyingness’), even though – and precisely because – it is in itself without value. Being outside efficacy, labour or production, being outside economisation as such, it resides only in its inability to be integrated. What purpose does it serve? None. Or, perhaps, none other than demonstrating the irreducibility of a life, of a singular existence, to any discourse, narrative, identity or ideology, insofar as such structures, in their attempt to comprehend (or apprehend) the existent and put it to use always and violently fall short. As Theodor Adorno wrote;It is this passing-on and being unable to linger, this tacit assent to the primacy of the general over the particular, which constitutes not only the deception of idealism in hypostasizing concepts, but also its inhumanity, that has no sooner grasped the particular than it reduces it to a thought-station, and finally comes all too quickly to terms with suffering and death (74 emphasis added).This moment of stillness then, of declining and remaining aside, represents, for me, the anarchical and all but silent condition of possibility for all political strategy as such (see Harrison, Corporeal Remains). A condition of possibility which all political strategy carries within itself, more or less well, more or less consciously, as a memory of the finite and corporeal nature of existence. A memory which may always and eventually come to protest against the strategy itself. Strategy itself as strategy; as command, as a calculated and calculating order. And so, and we should be clear about this, such a remaining still is a demonstration.A demonstration not unlike, for example, that of the general anonymous population in José Saramago’s remarkable novel Seeing, who ‘act’ more forcefully through non-action than any through any ends-directed action. A demonstration of the kind which Agamben writes about after those in Tiananmen Square in 1989:The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be the struggle for control of the state, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity) […] [who] cannot form a societas because they do not poses any identity to vindicate or bond of belonging for which to seek recognition (Coming Community 85-67; original emphasis).A demonstration like that which sounds through Köves when his health fails in the camps and he finds himself being wheeled on a handcart taken for dead;a snatch of speech that I was barely able to make out came to my attention, and in that hoarse whispering I recognized even less readily the voice that has once – I could not help recollecting – been so strident: ‘I p … pro … test,’ it muttered” (Fatelessness 187 ellipses in original).The inmate pushing the cart stops and pulls him up by the shoulders, asking with astonishment “Was? Du willst noch leben? [What? You still want to live?] […] and right then I found it odd, since it could not have been warranted and, on the whole, was fairly irrational (187).AcknowledgmentsMy sincere thanks to the editors of this special issue, David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, for their interest, encouragement and patience. Thanks also to Sadie, especially for her comments on the final section. ReferencesAdorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London: Verso, 1974.Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.———. The Man without Content. Stanford: Stanford U P, 1999.Barthes, Roland. The Neutral. New York: Columbia U P, 2005.Bataille, Georges. Literature and Evil. London: Marion Boyars, 1985.Clarke, Timothy. The Poetics of Singularity: The Counter-Culturalist Turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and the Late Gadamer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2005.Deák, István. "Stranger in Hell." New York Review of Books 23 Sep. 2003: 65-68.Derrida, Jacques. Rogues. 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