Description
Book SynopsisMinima 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 ForPhilology, 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 wh
Trade Review
"Hamacher's thoughtful and provocative theses on philology instigate nothing less than a full reformation of our relationship with language-a penetrating declaration of love that sets refreshingly new terms for interminable engagement." -- -John T. Hamilton Harvard University "Even as Minima Philologica prompts comparison with such masterpieces of aphoristic prose as Schlegel's "Athenaum Fragments," Nietzsche's Gay Science, and Adorno's Minima Moralia, it asks of its readers that they explore the incomparable-in other words, the philological-elements in whatever falls under the categories of culture, science, and morality." -- -Peter Fenves Northwestern University "The philological questions relentlessly posed in this brilliant volume in no way fall within the confines of a foreclosed academic discipline. Rather, Minima Philologica opens up our modes of knowing and not knowing, philosophy, and language. The writings of Werner Hamacher have long served as something of a touchstone for students of literature and philosophy. The work associated with that authorial name, here as elsewhere, is also a thinking with and thinking against, a call to and response to, a plethora of Western writers. It is impossible to overestimate the breadth of the book's implications and impossible to overestimate the force of its readings. And yet again, Minima Philologica is a remarkable achievement perhaps less for the complex, multi-faceted content it so carefully seems to communicate than for the daring, almost carefree exuberance of its written performance. This 'act of searching itself,' which Hamacher also speaks of as a 'catastrophe of questioning,' will result in 'astonishment and wonder' for the reader." -- -Carol Jacobs Yale University
