Description
Book SynopsisWerner Hamacher's witty and elliptical 95 Theses on Philology challenges the humanitiesand particularly academic philologythat assume language to be a given entity rather than an event. In Give the Word eleven scholars take up the challenge presented by Hamacher's theses.
Trade Review“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 (
literally “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
Theses could not find a more vibrant afterlife.”—Rebecca Comay, professor of philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Toronto
“Werner Hamacher’s
95 Theses on Philology proposes a new radical understanding of philology distinct from its dusty nineteenth-century conception. The eleven responses to his
95 Theses 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
Theses 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
Table of Contents95 Theses on Philology /
95 Thesen zur Philologie 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
