Performativität und Rhetorik der Redlichkeit

As the understanding of subject and language changed in the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of sincerity (Redlichkeit) was profoundly problematized. Rather than rejecting the term, this study develops a theory of rhetorical and performative sincerity that relies neither on the subject nor on propositional language. Close readings of literary texts show that this sincerity is a representational mode that reveals the possibility of ethical speech beyond the subject.