Minima Philologica brings together two essays by Werner Hamacher
that are meant to revitalize philology as a practice beyond its
restriction to the restoration of linguistic data and their
meanings. In these two texts, “95 Theses on Philology” and
“For—Philology,” Hamacher propounds a notion of generalized
philology that is equivalent to the real production of linguistic
utterances, and indeed utterances not limited to predicative or
even discursive statements. Philology, in speaking for language
where no clear and distinct language is given, exhibits and exposes
the structure of language in general. The first text, “95 Theses
on Philology,” challenges academic philology as well as other
disciplines across the humanities and sciences that “use”
language, assuming it to be a given entity and not an event. The
theses develop what Hamacher calls the “idea of philology” by
describing the constitution of its objects, its relation to
knowledge, its suspension of consciousness, and its freedom for
what remains always still to be said. In “For—Philology,”
both speaking and writing, Hamacher argues, follow, discursively
and non-discursively, the desire for language.
Desire—philía—is the insatiable affect that drives the
movement between utterances toward the next and the one after that.
Desiring language—logos—means to respond to an alien utterance
that precedes you, ignorant about where the path will lead,
accepting loss and uncertainty, thinking in and through language
and the lack of it, exceeding, returning, responding to others,
cutting into and off what is to be said. In arguing this, Hamacher
responds, directly or obliquely, to other philological thinkers
such as Plato and Schlegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Heidegger, as
well as to poets such as Rene Char, Francis Ponge, Paul Celan, and
Friedrich Holderlin. Taken together, the essays of Minima
Philologica constitute a manifesto for a new understanding of
linguistic existence that breaks new ways of attending to language
and those who live by it.
General
Imprint: |
Fordham University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory |
Release date: |
March 2015 |
Firstpublished: |
2016 |
Authors: |
Werner Hamacher
|
Translators: |
Catharine Diehl
• Jason Groves
|
Dimensions: |
216 x 140 x 18mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
176 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8232-6535-0 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8232-6535-8 |
Barcode: |
9780823265350 |
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