Ruptures in Walls and Language: Performative Figures between Materiality and Figurative Sense

Abstract

The article examines figures of ruptures and cracks in film, literature and philosophy. It traces lines of connection between an uncanny hardware-store commercial, Heidegger’s ontology, Derrida’s deconstruction and Ovid’s Metamorphoses . In asking, what kind of metaphors figures of cracks and ruptures are, how they affect our corporeality, and what kind of knowledge can be gained from them, the article argues for an ethical poetics that embraces material stories and suppressed histories.