Espacements: Chez Mallarmé et Heidegger

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationship between language and space in the work of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and in the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). The methodology is based on a phenomenological approach. As such, the phenomena of language and space are not treated thematically or solely in view of gaining a new linguistic interpretation of the texts in question. Rather, the perspective here proposed seeks an analysis of the performativity in language as perceived in the texts of the poet (Mallarmé) and the performativity pertinent to the ontology of language in the work of the thinker (Heidegger). The central texts studied are Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés, and Igitur, as well as Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, (Being and Time) and his lectures: Building Dwelling Thinking, Letter on Humanism, Of Art and Space, among other pertinent texts.