Blindness and Animality, or Learning How to Live Finally in Clarice Lispector's The Passion according to G. H

In: Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, Band 23, Heft 2, S. 113-135

Abstract

Clarice Lispector's The Passion according to G. H. (1964) takes up the themes of animality and blindness as modes of thinking and living beyond the limits of subjectivity. While the notion of animality was subsequently explored by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Mille plateaux and Jacques Derrida in L'animal que donc je suis, Derrida in Mémoires d'aveugle, Hélène Cixous in Écrire aveugle, and Jean-Luc Nancy in Tombe de sommeil were experimenting with the theme of blindness and the rejection of sight. This article argues that Lispector—before poststructuralist thinkers began to write about such themes—brings animality and blindness together to open a way toward learning how to live finally, that is, living without the constraints of external determination and beyond the delimitations of preconceived subjectivity.