Shoshana Felman is an American

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

and current Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

. She was on the faculty of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

from 1970 to 2004, where in 1986 she was awarded the Thomas E. Donnelly Professorship of French and Comparative Literature. She specializes in 19th and 20th century French literature,

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

trauma Trauma most often refers to: * Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source * Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event *Traumatic i ...

and testimony, and

law and literature The law and literature movement focuses on connections between law and literature. This field has roots in two developments in the intellectual history of law—first, the growing doubt about whether law in isolation is a source of value and mean ...

. Felman earned her Ph.D. at the University of

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

in France in 1970.

Work

Felman works in the fields of

psychoanalytic literary criticism Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic reading has been practised since the early de ...

performativity ''Performativity'' is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender st ...

theory,

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

testimony, and other areas, though her writings frequently question, ironize, or test the limits of the very critical methods being employed. Often in her writing a reversal will occur so that the critical vocabulary gets subjected to and converted into the terms of the literary or cultural object being scrutinized rather than simply settling the meaning of the object; thus in Felman's style of criticism there is no fixed hierarchy of theory over and beyond the reach of the literary object. As such, her methods share an affinity with

deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...

, for which she is sometimes associated with the

Yale School The Yale school is a colloquial name for an influential group of literary critics, theorists, and philosophers of literature that were influenced by Jacques Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction. Many of the theorists were affiliated with Yale ...

and colleagues such as Paul de Man.

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

is a significant influence on Felman and she was among the vanguard of theorists—and perhaps foremost among those addressing Anglophone audiences—to rigorously apply his concepts to the study of literature. Since the 1990s Felman has written texts on testimony and trauma, particularly in the context of the

and other

collective trauma The term collective trauma calls attention to the "psychological reactions to a traumatic event that affect an entire society." Collective trauma does not only represent a historical fact or event, but is a collective memory of an awful event th ...

Bibliography

* ''The Claims of Literature: The Shoshana Felman Reader'', ed. by Emily Sun, Eyal Peretz, Ulrich Baer, Fordham University Press, 2007 * ''The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century'', Harvard University Press, 2002 * ''What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993 * ''Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature Psychoanalysis and History'' (co-authored with

Dori Laub Dori Laub ( he, דורי לאוב; June 8, 1937 – June 23, 2018) was an Israeli-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a clinical professor in Yale University’s Department of Psychiatry, an expert in the area of testimony methodology, and a ...

, M.D.) (1992) * ''

and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture'' (1987) * Editor, ''Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading–Otherwise'' (1982) * ''Le Scandale du corps parlant. Don Juan avec Austin, ou la Séduction en deux langues'' (1980), translated as ''The Literary Speech Act. Don Juan with Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages'' (1984), reissued as ''The Scandal of the Speaking Body. Don Juan with Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages'' (2002) * ''Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis'' (1985), reissued with added materials and interviews (2003) * ''La Folie et la chose littéraire'' (1978) * ''La "Folie" dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Stendhal'' (1971).

References

External links

Shoshana Felman

Department of French and Italian faculty biography. {{DEFAULTSORT:Felman, Shoshana Living people Emory University faculty Yale University faculty Grenoble Alpes University alumni American literary critics Women literary critics Year of birth missing (living people) American women critics