This daring work argues that the traumas of the twentieth century form the backdrop of a subjectivity marked by the drive for survival, and that sublime figurations are the aesthetic marker of that drive. Hence, the works of Jean François Lyotard, Samuel Beckett, and Marguerite Duras can be understood only with reference to the postmodern conception of the sublime. The sublime becomes a central modality for bearing witness to the terrors of history and to the possibilities of writing in their wake. This book will be of special value to those concerned with aesthetic and literary theory, trauma theory, and postmodernism.