ABSTRACT
Rethinking literature today is channeled, then, through the acknowledgment that "anxiety has slipped into the body of things" and that literature is the means for getting us to know and to feel it. One can rethink literature of our time, against or with those who preceded us, but never without them. In both cases, rethinking seems to imply the idea of progress: rethinking in order to improve, as one rethinks a machine, a timetable, or the arrangement of a room. Literature, then, is like a driving belt of human knowledge, one might almost say pedagogical knowledge: literature teaches us to love, to suffer, to forgive, to resist and even to die. It does not only inform us, it literally forms us. This is not theoretical knowledge, but practical knowledge, a very practical handbook, at least for the author.
