Eighty years after the end of WWII, questions remain about the adequacy, let alone possibility, of language to convey the "limit-experience." Yoko Ota, writing City of Corpses [shikabane no machi] just days after surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, acknowledges that the writer’s challenge is nearly impossible in the face of such an unprecedented weapon. Nevertheless, she still responds to the intense urgency to write. This panels invites papers that take up the problem of writing the "event"-- or, as Blanchot articulates, the problem of the "writing of the disaster"-- especially in its contemporary accentuation where "writing is the passage 'to' the impossibility of thought and representation" (Haver, The Body of This Death 76). Some questions, among others, include the following: How might literary writing offer/demand a radical engagement with language in a way that does not reduce them to categories of representation or to historiographical objects of study? How do literature and poetry open up spaces where writers can take up the challenge of "bearing witness"? Paul Celan explained that it is not simply a matter of creating new words. This implies the possibility of authentic communication that is not tethered to the techné of representation. What are the possibilities offered by existing literary forms and modes, considering the accelerated fusion of techno-science that seems to mask the crisis of writing? (virtual panel at the NeMLA Convention, 3-5 March 2026)