Boku to "Sensei"

[Machine Translation] What I am about to recount is the 14-year journey of my days and thoughts spent with a certain Professor." Who exactly was the critic Norihiro Kato? What is criticism? What does it mean to live alongside criticism? I have been thinking about these questions ever since that day. I enrolled at Waseda University in 2005 and joined my Professor s" seminar. Although I took a job for a time, I later entered graduate school and ended up serving as my Professor s" teaching assistant. I recall the exercises in literary analysis where we pored over a single text in depth, and the times he got genuinely angry with us students. I learned of the Great East Japan Earthquake while abroad on sabbatical. The deaths of loved ones, the decision to leave the university... Drawing on the words left behind by the Professor," who passed away in 2019 at the age of 71 after a battle with illness, I would like to reflect on the meaning of thinking, writing, and living.

これから僕が語るのは、一人の「先生」と過ごした14年間の日々と思考の軌跡である。批評家・加藤典洋とは、何者だったのか?批評とは何か。批評とともに生きるとはどういうことなのか。あの日からずっとそのことを考えている。2005年に早稲田大学に入学し、「先生」のゼミに入った僕は、一度は就職するものの、その後大学院に入学して「先生」のTAを務めることになる。ひとつのテキストを徹底的に読み込む作品読解の演習、学生に対して本気で怒ったときのこと。サバティカル中に海の向こうで知った東日本大震災。大切な人々の死、大学を辞める決断...。闘病を経て、2019年、71歳で亡くなった「先生」が残した言葉たちを手がかりに、考えること、書くこと、生きることの意味について考えてみたい。