The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

Shoshana Felman originally published this venture under the title "The Literary Speech Act" in 1984. Because it had made little impression Stanford University Press repackaged this intriguing Lacanian-bent reading of language and its seductive intentions under a new title, and, as if it were not enough, with a foreword by Stanley Cavell and an afterword by Judith Butler. The latter is exceptional as always, while the former delights in providing some of the history to set the stage as a foreword well should.Eros and language have often been seen as consorts but through the intermediary of speech act theory and a close reading of Moliere's Don Juan this work hinges on overlooked crevices to open a discourse yet needing further applications.The premise is executed with imaginative sensibilities, however there is a deeper statement being made by the author, which corresponds with Nietzsche's corrective of Aristotle, claiming that man is not so much a political animal as much as he is a promising one. This semiotic distinction is laced in a brave exploration of J.L. Austin's speech act theory as well as through a deconstructive rendition of the Don Juan myth as it reads in Moliere."The Scandal of the Speaking Body" announced an essential theme in contemporary philosophy (and theology) which has not assumed the voice its role demands. There has been much talk about the notion of the gift and the place of speech in the political, but the element of promise has been left to its own devices, seduced but not consummated, called upon but not interrogated. Felman does just that, while in order to never strain her focus she renounces to fully delve into the correlation which promise has with the political, making it an assumption which is alluded to, inspite of the fact that it is to this notion that are owed the most illuminating examples. The act of promising is explored with vivacious vehemence and intelligence in a humorous and sound performance that sets the stage as it undoes it. Performance studies has become a rightful descendent of speech act theory and this book explains theoretical nuances that others take for granted. The re-issue of this title is a worthy cause and the encounter here performed a study that deserves a wide readership as much as the seductive role of promising in language must find a ways to lure more attention and further interest.