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We have left the twentieth century, but this century of violence
and extremes has not left us: Its shadow has become longer and
blacker. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, the
memory of the Holocaust is less and less anchored in the lived
experience of survivors and witnesses. Shadows of Trauma analyzes
the transformation of the past from an individual experience to a
collective construction, with special attention to the tensions
that arise when personal experience collides with official
commemoration. In addition to surveying memory's important terms
and distinctions, Assmann traces the process that emerged after the
fall of the Berlin Wall, of creating a new German memory of the
Holocaust. Assmann revisits the pitfalls of "false memory" and
lingering forms of denial and repression, as well as the new
twenty-first-century discourses, such as that of German
"victimhood," as well as the new memory sites for a future in which
German memory will be increasingly oriented toward a European
context. Combining theoretical analysis with historical case
studies, the book revisits crucial debates and controversial issues
out of which "memory culture" has emerged as a collective project
and a work in progress.
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Portrait (Paperback)
Jean-Luc Nancy; Translated by Sarah Clift, Simon Sparks; Introduction by Jeffrey S. Librett
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R683
Discovery Miles 6 830
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This book examines the practice of portraits as a way in to
grasping the paradoxes of subjectivity. To Nancy, the portrait is
suspended between likeness and strangeness, identity and distance,
representation and presentation, exactitude and forcefulness. It
can identify an individual, but it can also express the dynamics by
means of which its subject advances and withdraws. The book
consists of two extended essays written a decade apart but in close
conversation, in which Nancy considers the range of aspirations
articulated by the portrait. Heavily illustrated, it includes a
newly written preface bringing the two essays together and a
substantial Introduction by Jeffrey Librett, which places Nancy's
work within the range of thinking of aesthetics and the subject,
from religion, to aesthetics, to psychoanalysis. Though undergirded
by a powerful grasp of the philosophical and psychoanalytic
tradition that has rendered our sense of the subject so
problematic, Nancy's book is at heart a delightful, unpretentious
reading of three dozen portraits, from ancient drinking mugs to
recent experimental or parodic pieces in which the artistic
representation of a sitter is made from their blood, germ cultures,
or DNA. The contemporary world of ubiquitous photos, Nancy argues,
in no way makes the portrait a thing of the past. On the contrary,
the forms of appearing that mark the portrait continue to challenge
how we see the bodies and representations that dominate our world.
The four talks collected here transcribe lectures delivered to an
audience of children between the ages of ten and fourteen, under
the auspices of the "little dialogues" series at the Montreuil's
center for the dramatic arts. Modeled on Walter Benjamin's
"Aufklarung fur Kinder" radio talks, this series aims to awaken its
young audience to pressing philosophical concerns. Each talk in
God, Justice, Love, Beauty explores what is at stake in these
topics as essential moments in human experience. (Indeed, the book
argues that they are constitutive of human experience.) Following
each, Nancy's audience is given a chance to engage with him in a
process of philosophical questioning; the texts of these touching
and probing exchanges are included in the volume. Despite the fact
that these lectures were delivered to an audience of children, the
intellectual level they achieve-while remaining easily
comprehensible-is astounding. No attempt is made to simplify
Nancy's positions or to resolve the complexities that arise in the
course of the talks or the question periods that follow. The work
of opening performed here is fully in keeping with the strategy of
Nancy's philosophy as a whole. Thus, for readers unfamiliar with
his work, God, Justice, Love, Beauty will function as an excellent
introduction to Nancy's larger corpus. As varied as the individual
talks are, they share the motif of incalculability or the
immeasurable. Broadly speaking, one could say that the various ways
in which Nancy approaches this motif exemplify his deconstructive
approach to think of human existence. As well, those treatments
exemplify his conviction that the task of thinking is to develop
original ways of communicating the incalculable. God, Justice,
Love, Beauty is thus a skillful reminder that philosophy is
important to all of us. The book is also a model of intellectual
generosity and openness. Seamlessly moving from Schwarzenegger to
Plato, from Kant, Roland Barthes, and Caravaggio to Caillou, Harry
Potter, and the pages of Gala magazine, Nancy's wide-ranging
references bear witness to his commitment to think of "culture" in
its broadest sense.
Whereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and
unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be
related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does
not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it
works. In examining what it means to be "determined" by history, it
also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters
with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings.
Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries from
John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin Clift looks
at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of
experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the
co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the
quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other
possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the
mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations
and blockages, and the role played by contingency in
representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to
reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a
traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.
We have left the twentieth century, but this century of violence
and extremes has not left us: Its shadow has become longer and
blacker. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, the
memory of the Holocaust is less and less anchored in the lived
experience of survivors and witnesses. Shadows of Trauma analyzes
the transformation of the past from an individual experience to a
collective construction, with special attention to the tensions
that arise when personal experience collides with official
commemoration. In addition to surveying memory’s important terms
and distinctions, Assmann traces the process that emerged after the
fall of the Berlin Wall, of creating a new German memory of the
Holocaust. Assmann revisits the pitfalls of “false memory” and
lingering forms of denial and repression, as well as the new
twenty-first-century discourses, such as that of German
“victimhood,” as well as the new memory sites for a future in
which German memory will be increasingly oriented toward a European
context. Combining theoretical analysis with historical case
studies, the book revisits crucial debates and controversial issues
out of which “memory culture” has emerged as a collective
project and a work in progress.
Whereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and
unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be
related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does
not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it
works. In examining what it means to be "determined" by history, it
also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters
with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings.
Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries from
John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin Clift looks
at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of
experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the
co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the
quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other
possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the
mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations
and blockages, and the role played by contingency in
representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to
reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a
traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.
Is, as Hamlet once complained, time out joint? Have the ways we
understand the past and the future—and their relationship to the
present—been reordered? The past, it seems, has returned with a
vengeance: as aggressive nostalgia, as traumatic memory, or as
atavistic origin narratives rooted in nation, race, or tribe. The
future, meanwhile, has lost its utopian glamor, with the belief in
progress and hope for a better future eroded by fears of ecological
collapse. In this provocative book, Aleida Assmann argues that the
apparently solid moorings of our temporal orientation have
collapsed within the span of a generation. To understand this
profound cultural crisis, she reconstructs the rise and fall of
what she calls "time regime of modernity" that underpins notions of
modernization and progress, a shared understanding that is now
under threat. Is Time Out of Joint? assesses the deep change in the
temporality of modern Western culture as it relates to our
historical experience, historical theory, and our life-world of
shared experience, explaining what we have both gained and lost
during this profound transformation.
The four talks collected here transcribe lectures delivered to an
audience of children between the ages of ten and fourteen, under
the auspices of the "little dialogues" series at the Montreuil's
center for the dramatic arts. Modeled on Walter Benjamin's
"Aufklarung fur Kinder" radio talks, this series aims to awaken its
young audience to pressing philosophical concerns. Each talk in
God, Justice, Love, Beauty explores what is at stake in these
topics as essential moments in human experience. (Indeed, the book
argues that they are constitutive of human experience.) Following
each, Nancy's audience is given a chance to engage with him in a
process of philosophical questioning; the texts of these touching
and probing exchanges are included in the volume. Despite the fact
that these lectures were delivered to an audience of children, the
intellectual level they achieve-while remaining easily
comprehensible-is astounding. No attempt is made to simplify
Nancy's positions or to resolve the complexities that arise in the
course of the talks or the question periods that follow. The work
of opening performed here is fully in keeping with the strategy of
Nancy's philosophy as a whole. Thus, for readers unfamiliar with
his work, God, Justice, Love, Beauty will function as an excellent
introduction to Nancy's larger corpus. As varied as the individual
talks are, they share the motif of incalculability or the
immeasurable. Broadly speaking, one could say that the various ways
in which Nancy approaches this motif exemplify his deconstructive
approach to think of human existence. As well, those treatments
exemplify his conviction that the task of thinking is to develop
original ways of communicating the incalculable. God, Justice,
Love, Beauty is thus a skillful reminder that philosophy is
important to all of us. The book is also a model of intellectual
generosity and openness. Seamlessly moving from Schwarzenegger to
Plato, from Kant, Roland Barthes, and Caravaggio to Caillou, Harry
Potter, and the pages of Gala magazine, Nancy's wide-ranging
references bear witness to his commitment to think of "culture" in
its broadest sense.
|
Portrait (Hardcover)
Jean-Luc Nancy; Translated by Sarah Clift, Simon Sparks; Introduction by Jeffrey S. Librett
|
R2,121
Discovery Miles 21 210
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
This book examines the practice of portraits as a way in to
grasping the paradoxes of subjectivity. To Nancy, the portrait is
suspended between likeness and strangeness, identity and distance,
representation and presentation, exactitude and forcefulness. It
can identify an individual, but it can also express the dynamics by
means of which its subject advances and withdraws. The book
consists of two extended essays written a decade apart but in close
conversation, in which Nancy considers the range of aspirations
articulated by the portrait. Heavily illustrated, it includes a
newly written preface bringing the two essays together and a
substantial Introduction by Jeffrey Librett, which places Nancy's
work within the range of thinking of aesthetics and the subject,
from religion, to aesthetics, to psychoanalysis. Though undergirded
by a powerful grasp of the philosophical and psychoanalytic
tradition that has rendered our sense of the subject so
problematic, Nancy's book is at heart a delightful, unpretentious
reading of three dozen portraits, from ancient drinking mugs to
recent experimental or parodic pieces in which the artistic
representation of a sitter is made from their blood, germ cultures,
or DNA. The contemporary world of ubiquitous photos, Nancy argues,
in no way makes the portrait a thing of the past. On the contrary,
the forms of appearing that mark the portrait continue to challenge
how we see the bodies and representations that dominate our world.
Christian parables have retained their force well beyond the sphere
of religion; indeed, they share with much of modern literature
their status as a form of address: “Who hath ears to hear, let
him hear.” There is no message without there first being—or,
more subtly, without there also being in the message itself—an
address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening. This is not an
exhortation of the kind “Pay attention!” Rather, it is a
warning: if you do not understand, the message will go away. The
scene in the Gospel of John in which the newly risen Christ enjoins
the Magdalene, “Noli me tangere,” a key moment in the general
parable made up of his life, is a particularly good example of this
sudden appearance in which a vanishing plays itself out.
Resurrected, he speaks, makes an appeal, and leaves. “Do not
touch me.” Beyond the Christ story, this everyday phrase says
something important about touching in general. It points to the
place where touching must not touch in order to carry out its touch
(its art, its tact, its grace). The title essay of this volume is
both a contribution to Nancy’s project of a “deconstruction of
Christianity” and an exemplum of his remarkable writings on art,
in analyses of “Noli me tangere” paintings by such painters as
Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Correggio. It is
also in tacit dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s monumental tribute
to Nancy’s work in Le toucher—Jean-Luc Nancy. For the
English-language edition, Nancy has added an unpublished essay on
the Magdalene and the English translation of “In Heaven and on
the Earth,” a remarkable lecture he gave in a series designed to
address children between six and twelve years of age. Closely
aligned with his entire project of “the deconstruction of
Christianity,’” this lecture may give the most accesible
account of his ideas about God.
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