No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics

“Drawing on a powerful critical network of ideas and a refreshing juxtaposition of theorists, Syd Zolf rethinks the critical underpinnings of the examinations of race, history, society, culture, ontology, and ideas of witnessing. As a critical-theoretical intervention and a lyric prose artifact, No One’s Witness will appeal not only to theorists and critics, but also to poets, professors, and students.”—John Keene, author of Counternarratives: Stories and Novellas

“Renewing the poetics of survival and witnessing, Syd Zolf asks what it means to witness as No One, where No One is less a position than a form or mode of responsiveness that emerges in the continuing aftermath of annihilation. This No One is not one, yet it offers here a way of bearing witness in forms both monstrous and rife with possible futures. In this book poetics is the interruptive work of philosophy and poetry taken together. No One's Witness shows in brilliant and moving ways how language must change to come close to registering the living aftermath of destruction.”—Judith Butler, author of The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind

"A valuable resource for those interested in German literature or Black history and other examples of human-made violence. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."—R. C. Conard, Choice