This panel invites papers which examine the question of literature in the texts of Lacoue- Labarthe, or which bring his work to bear on readings of literary texts.

In “L’Imprésentable,” Lacoue-Labarthe suggests that to ask the question of the relation between literature and philosophy is inevitably to treat literature as a philosopheme. Responding to Blanchot’s reading of German Romanticism, he goes on to write that, during Romanticism, “what is essential in the relationship between literature and philosophy occurred and was determined (but perhaps did so, strictly speaking without occurring and without being determined); because it is here that the question of this relation was, in the same moment opened and closed, immediately carried to its point of rupture, exposed, exceeded , passed (even though it is in a certain way still to come).”

What is at stake in what Lacoue-Labarthe refers to as the philosophical determination of literature? What warrants Lacoue-Labarthe’s excessive caution with regard to literature? What, more generally, is one to make of the radically equivocal characteristics he attributes to literature in its relation with philosophy? How can this relation between literature and philosophy “to come” be understood? How does the question (of literature) relate to the question of being (that other question inseparable from Lacoue-Labarthe's writing)? To what extent, if at all, does the literary escape its philosophical determination?

Send 250-400 word proposals to Jonathan Luftig at jluftig@jewel.morgan.edu by April 1, 2007.