Gabriela Isaila | News

The new issue of Philobiblon is out, with our colleague’s essay

The first 2016-issue of Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities publishes Zsuzsa Selyem’s essay entitled “Being an Object. Being a Person. Indirect Interpersonality in Imre Kertész’s Ouvre”.

Abstract Imre Kertész wrote in one of his novels, “Fiasco”, that what he had always tried was to transform his eternal state of object into the state of a person. Starting from the problem of personality, my research in Imre Kertész’s oeuvre (novels, essays and diaries) is led by the following questions: What is the role of writing in gaining one’s freedom, in the transformation of an initial state of being an object into a state of being a person? What is the role of creating fiction in the representation of the personal experience? How can death be the gesture of maintaining the world? (B.’s suicide in Liquidation) How can withdrawal serve as a creative force? How can one ethically interpret the tension between the responsibility of remembrance and the possibility of love?

Keywords Auschwitz, banality of Evil, consumer, depersonalization, fictionalization, historicization, Imre Kertész, particularization, personal, privilege, responsibility, solidarity, object, totalitarianism, post-totalitarianism