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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE / 448 is not the voice, but the face. In many respects Nikulinâs attempt to propose a new ontology of dialogue remains silently locked within the prison of metaphysical language. Proposing âvoiceâ as the primal manifestation of selfhood (73), he ignores the need to account for the rules that make the voice comprehensible (i.e., distinct from mere noise) and also for the presence of the pre-linguistic surplus (the eidema), which authenticates the voice even as it remains unvoiced. A similar criticism can be made of Nikulinâs treatment of time. Claiming that dialogue belongs to an âeternal now,â he simply rejects âhistoricityâ without providing any account of how dialogue helps to constitute human temporality. The paradox that plagues Nikulinâs project from the start is that it tirelessly hankers after a precise definition of a concept that it wants to preserve as indefinable. Nikulin attributes many adjectives to dialogue: it is oral, open-ended, and spontaneous. What sticks in the mind, however, are Nikulinâs negative determinations, which accumulate in long sequences reminiscent of the Russian philosopher Aleksei Losev (see his Dialectics of Myth [London: Routledge, 2003]). Nikulin protects the precious gem of âdialogueâ from contact with anything specific or
Comparative Literature – Duke University Press
Published: Jan 1, 2009
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