Ars Inventio, Poetic Laws: Law and Literature - The And

This paper introduces a general philosophical matheme of an

investigation of ‘law and literature.’ It claims that the experience of

literature is an encounter that outlives the reader and the normative

demand for an understanding. This matheme is read through Badiou’s

thoughts on poetry and the staging of ill-saying. Literature is

approached from the enigma of dictation or the sphinx. This event is

neither biographical nor a ‘mere’ linguistic event, but rather a zone of

indifference where both experience their reciprocal desubjectivization.

Law destines human life to transmit a holy transcendental patrimony

that wishes to dictate. In contrast, the experience of poetry, understood

in this work through Agamben’s thought, breaks with this dictation and

experiences the indissoluble, yet non-essential, unity of lived experience

and the poeticized in the medium of the and, that is language.