Witnessing beyond the Human

Kate Jenckes is Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan and the author of Reading Borges after Benjamin: Allegory, Afterlife, and the Writing of History, also published by SUNY Press.

"Witnessing beyond the Human is nourished by a myriad of different philosophical, theoretical, literary, and visual artistic sources. Jenckes's comparatist perspective is on full display, as is her extensive knowledge of the Argentinian and Chilean political, intellectual, and cultural scene. The book engages in a sustained and profound reflection on, and with, the thought of Jacques Derrida—in a way that is not typical in our field." — Revista de Estudios Hispánicos"Kate Jenckes's Witnessing beyond the Human investigates the political implications of decentering the human subject as a coherent and stable entity … The conclusions of Jenckes's study are useful for any scholar interested in the posthumanities: her articulation of Chefjec's myopic practice of writing as akin to the exposure to the unknown, or account of life, following Gelman, as more than an individual self-contained biological self, as that which contains difference, rather than effacing it." — Chasqui

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Messianicity beyond Militant Messianism: Apostrophe and Survival in Juan Gelman’s Poetry2. Myopic Witnessing and the Intermittent Possibilities of Community in Sergio Chejfec’s Los planetas and Boca de lobo3. Living and Writing in the Deserts of Modernity: Roberto Bolaño and the Alter-immunological Potential of Literature4. Image and Alterity Beyond the Sepulture of the Human: Eugenio Dittborn’s PhotocollagesConclusionWorks Cited & BibliographyNotesIndex