Give the Word Responses to Werner Hamacher's "95 Theses on Philology"
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Gerhard Richter is a professor of German studies and comparative literature at Brown University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Inheriting Walter Benjamin and Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics. Ann Smock is a professor emerita of French at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of two books, including What Is There to Say? (Nebraska, 2003), and has translated several others. An influential theorist, philosopher, and literary critic, Werner Hamacher (1948–2017) was a professor at the University of Frankfurt and founder of its Institute of General and Comparative Literary Studies.“This is a stunningly original collection of essays—utterly engrossing and compelling. Probing, erudite, elegant, witty, these essays explore the concept of philology at once literally (<i>literally</i> “literally,” that is, to the letter, down to its smallest granules of articulation) and expansively, inviting us to rethink the fundamental categories of existence—language, translation, tradition, genealogy, history, sociability, love, kinship, in short, just about everything. Hamacher’s magnificent <i>Theses</i> could not find a more vibrant afterlife.”—Rebecca Comay, professor of philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Toronto<br />
“Werner Hamacher’s <i>95 Theses on Philology</i> proposes a new radical understanding of philology distinct from its dusty nineteenth-century conception. The eleven responses to his <i>95 Theses</i> have provided him with an opportunity to comment extensively and in generous detail on the responses they provoked. Hamacher’s lengthy contribution is not only an extraordinary document of scholarly debate but also a superb piece in which he elaborates on the context of his <i>Theses</i> and on their rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications, thus also providing insight into the workings of his own thought.”—Rodolphe Gasché, Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
The 95 Theses, included in this volume, makes this collection a rich resource for the study and practice of “radical philology.” Hamacher’s philology interrupts and transforms, parting with tradition precisely in order to remain faithful to its radical but increasingly occluded core.
The contributors test Hamacher’s break with philology in a variety of ways, attempting a philological practice that does not take language as an object of knowledge, study, or even love. Thus, in responding to Hamacher’s Theses, the authors approach language that, because it can never be an object of any kind, awakens an unfamiliar desire. Taken together these essays problematize philological ontology in a movement toward radical reconceptualizations of labor, action, and historical time.
Werner Hamacher, translated by Catharine Diehl
Introduction
Gerhard Richter and Ann Smock
Part 1. Balances1. Was heißt Lesen?—What Is Called Reading?
Gerhard Richter
2. Language-Such-That-It’s-Spoken
Michèle Cohen-Halimi, translated by Ann Smock
3. 48: [this space intentionally left blank]
Jan Plug
4. Catch a Wave: Sound, Poetry, Philology
Sean Gurd
Part 2. Times
5. Einmal ist Keinmal: On the 76th of Werner Hamacher’s 95 Theses for Philology
Ann Smock
6. Rereading tempus fugit
Thomas Schestag
7. Language on Pause: Hamacher’s Seconds of Celan and Daive
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
Part 3. Categories
8. The Right Not to Complain: A Philology of Kinship
Avital “Irony” Ronell
9. The Category of Philology
Peter Fenves
10. The Philía of Philology
Susan Bernstein
11. Defining the Indefinite
Daniel Heller-Roazen
Part 4. Responding to Responses
12. What Remains to Be Said: On Twelve and More Ways of Looking at Philology
Werner Hamacher, translated by Kristina Mendicino
Contributors
Index