‘In der lydischen Tonart’: Listening to Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s <i>Phrase</i>

This article centers on the book Phrase, written over a period of more than twenty-five years (between 1979 and 2000) by the philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940–2007). The texts that compose Phrase elude the author’s usual philosophical and systematic tone, presenting instead a dense poetic (almost confessional) tonality. It is one of the most – if not the most – intimate texts by Lacoue-Labarthe. The article explores his concept of phrase: echoing the Greek term phrasis in a particular way, the Lacoue-Labarthian phrase is not a form, nor a style, but the proposition of an understanding of literature as an attempt to testify to an intimate and anterior experience, to write after and within the (aesthetic) loss of the (lyrical and ontological) subject. Phrase is read with specific consideration of Lacoue-Labarthe’s lifelong dialogue with Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), with a trio of philosophical operations and concepts in sight that help further understanding of the meaning of ‘phrase’. These are the idea of the double death, the loss of the subject, and Lacoue-Labarthe’s take on the concept of myth.