Writing and Madness is Shoshana Felman s most influential work of literary theor
y and criticism. Exploring the relations between literature, philosophy, and psy
choanalysis through brilliant studies of Balzac, Nerval, Flaubert, and James, as
well as Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, this book seeks the specificity of litera
ture in its relation to what culture excludes under the label madness. Why and h
ow do literary writers reclaim the discourse of the madman, and how does this re
claiming reveal something essential about the relation between literature and po
wer, as well as between literature and knowledge?
Every literary text continues
to communicate with madness with what has been excluded, decreed abnormal, unac
ceptable, or senseless by dramatizing a dynamically revitalized relation between
sense and nonsense, reason and unreason, the readable and the unreadable. This
revelation of the irreducibility of the relation between the readable and the un
readable constitutes what the author calls la chose litteraire the literary thin
g.
