The Trace of Judaism

Linking new readings of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Isaac Babel, and Osip Mandelstam to the work of Franco-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, ""The Trace of Judaism"" asks: how does Judaism haunt Russian literature; in what ways is Levinas' ethics as 'Russian' as it is arguably 'Jewish'; and, more broadly, how do ethics and aesthetics inflect each other. Vinokur considers how the encounter with the other invokes responsibilities ethical and aesthetic, and shows how the volatile relationship between ethics and aesthetics - much like the connection between the Russian and Jewish traditions - may be inextricably symbiotic. In an ambitious work that illuminates the writings of all of these authors, Vinokur pursues the implications of this reading for our understanding an ethical function of literature.