Art, Terror and Difference

The Poetological Option

Abstract

This paper discusses Félix Duque’s notion of postmodern art. The core of Duque’s analysis is the opposition between two sensations: terror and horror. Terror exceeds the categories and the interpretative schemes of the subject, but postmodern art translates this destabilizing connotation into horror, bringing it under the controlof the subject. The impossibility to express the terroristic events of 9/11 shows the limits of this normalization. The paper finds in Paul Celan’s poetry and in his distinction between “poetry” and “art” a support for Duque’s thesis. Paul Celan’s reflective and self-critical poetry evades the postmodern normalization and preserves art from the risk of overriding the relation between artistic image and reality, narrative language and life.