Nothing Matters

Abstract

This essay reads Miller reading literature and zero, zero in literature, tracing how a doubling at the heart of zero is echoed in Miller's work. Miller's fascination and engagement with literature as otherness invokes the ambiguity of the sign O, sharing its figure with a figure that isn't a figure, impossibly at once letter and numeral, now converging in Miller's text on zero in literature. Literature, like zero, like the lover, like the Other, incessantly invites analysis only to elude understanding. Nothing matters because it is a place of slippage, playfully unsettling our most deeply ingrained beliefs.

Notes

I am indebted to Paul Schreiber at Stockholm University for helping me to unravel the intricacies of the Greek terms for nobody, Oυτι≤/µη τι≤/µητι≤, and the punning this allows for.