Abstract: The talk will focus on Hélène Cixous's recourse to the figure of Jonah in her short story "Jonah's Whale," which rewrites the Biblical Book of Jonah, concentrating on Jonah's response to the calling of his name, the significance of mastery when it aims to obliterate others, and the notion of responsibility to others.
Brigitte Weltman-Aron is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Florida. She is the author of On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century England and France (SUNY Press, 2001). She also works on contemporary francophone literature and is the author of Algerian Imprints : Ethical Spacein the Works of Assia Djebar and Hélène Cixous (Columbia UP, 2015). Her current book project examines the association of whales with catastrophic destruction or the anticipation of the end of the world in literature.