Marc Nichanian
Yerevan: Actual Art, Johannissyan Institute, 2015
ISBN 978-9939-816-84-5
The double volume work by contemporary Diaspora Armenian philosopher Marc Nichanian entitled Image, Narrative, History is a philosophical study dedicated to the three key problematics in contemporary thinking mentioned in the title. The book refers to the writings of the twentieth century Diaspora Armenian and French writers Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Krikor Beledian, Zabel Yesayan, Shahan Shahnour and Zareh Vorbuni. This double volume work deals with the possibility for a witness to bare witness to her own death. While pursuing this question Nichanian proposes a phenomenology of a witness wherein the witness, deprived of subjectivity, is nothing else but her own image.
The first volume is dedicated to the literary and philosophical works of Bataille and Blanchot which Nichanian considers from the perspective of the relationship between the survivor and the image. Nichanian also focuses on the relationship between the two authors showing that in this case the work around the relationship between the survivor and the image unfolds in an atmosphere of a “philosophical friendship.”
The book has been published in collaboration with Actual Art Publishing and with the financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Both volumes can be found at the bookstores and libraries in Yerevan.