Notes from Source: This dissertation studies three books that unfold as inquiries into the possibility of being in relation. I argue that Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You, Anne Carson’s Nox, and Roni Horn’s Another Water (The River Thames, for Example) attest to a form of togetherness that rests not on recognition or perception, but rather on the sense of a space that remains without relation. Readings these books in light of Michel Foucault’s description of the archive, and Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of thought, I show that this space marks the very place where relations emerge, a place, therefore, that exceeds both sight and thought. The books not only present modes of seeing, knowing, or thinking that turn towards this place, but also stage a sensuous engagement with the unseen, unsaid, or unthought. In each chapter, accordingly, I read scenes that both trace an experience that eludes the seeing or knowing subject, and bring the reader in touch with a space beyond relation. Drawing, in turn, on William Haver’s notion of an erotics of thought, Roland Barthes’ theory of photography, and Maurice Blanchot’s theorization of the essential solitude, I delineate the ways in which these exemplary scenes affirm the impossibility of resolving the question of how to be with others. To engage this impossibility, the books suggest, is to open up relations to possibilities unforeseen.

Further Notes: Accepted: 2019-07-23T20:00:26Z