Gerundive thinking in Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback’s Time in Exile

Abstract

ABSTRACT Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback’s Time in Exile illuminates being in “gerundive time.” The gerundive tense (which is similar to the infinitive tense in English) captures how our being is always already “suspended” between worlds and meanings—how our being is a “non-final verb.” Schuback considers such existence in the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, and Clarice Lispector. Of the three thinkers, Lispector’s writing best reveals how existence (especially existence in exile) is an “immense struggle for presence.” Schuback’s hope is that we may find a home in our homelessness.