Search results for ""Author Peter Fenves""

Speech act theory has taught us "how to do things with words." Arresting Language turns its attention in the opposite direction—toward the surprising things that language can undo and leave undone. In the eight essays of this volume, arresting language is seen as language at rest, words no longer in service to the project of establishing conventions or instituting legal regimes. Concentrating on both widely known and seldom-read texts from a variety of philosophers, writers, and critics—from Leibniz and Mendelssohn, through Kleist and Hebel, to Benjamin and Irigaray—the book analyzes the genesis and structure of interruption, a topic of growing interest to contemporary literary studies, continental philosophy, legal studies, and theological reflection. Beginning with an exposition of Hölderlin's rigorous account of interruption in terms of the "pure word," in which the event of representation alone appears, Arresting Language identifies critical moments in philosophical and literary texts during which language itself—without any identifiable speaker—arrests otherwise continuous processes and procedures, including the process of representation and the procedures for its legitimization. The book then investigates a series of pure words: the fatal verdict (arrêt) of divine wisdom in Leibniz, the performance of Jewish ceremonial practices in Mendelssohn, the issuing of unauthorized arrest warrants in Kleist, fraudulent acts of storytelling in Hebel, the eruption of tragic silence and the "mass strike" in Benjamin, and the recurrence of angelic intervention in Irigaray. At the center of this volume is a detailed explication of Benjamin's effort to transform Husserl's program for a phenomenological epoche into a paradoxically nonprogrammatic, paradisal epoche, by means of which the structure of paradise can be exactly outlined and the Messianic moment—as the ultimate event of arresting language—can at last appear to enter into its own.

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The Messianic Reduction is a groundbreaking study of Walter Benjamin's thought. Fenves places Benjamin's early writings in the context of contemporaneous philosophy, with particular attention to the work of Bergson, Cohen, Husserl, Frege, and Heidegger. By concentrating on a neglected dimension of Benjamin's friendship with Gershom Scholem, who was a student of mathematics before he became a scholar of Jewish mysticism, Fenves shows how mathematical research informs Benjamin's reflections on the problem of historical time. In order to capture the character of Benjamin's "entrance" into the phenomenological school, the book includes a thorough analysis of two early texts he wrote under the title of "The Rainbow," translated here for the first time. In its final chapters, the book works out Benjamin's deep and abiding engagement with Kantian critique, including Benjamin's discovery of the political counterpart to the categorical imperative in the idea of "pure violence."

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"Poetry does not impose, it exposes itself," wrote Paul Celan. Werner Hamacher's investigations into crucial texts of philosophical and literary modernity show that Celan's apothegm is also valid for the structure of understanding and for language in general. In Premises Hamacher demonstrates that the promise of a subject position is not only unavoidable—and thus operates as a structural imperative—but is also unattainable and therefore by necessity open to possibilities other than that defined as "position," to redefinitions and unexpected transformations of the merely thetical act. Proceeding along the lines of both philosophical argument and critical reading, Hamacher presents the fullest account of the vast disruption in the theories and ethics of positional and propositional acts—a disruption first exposed by Kant's analysis of the minimal requirements for linguistic and practical action. Focusing on the double trait of every premise—that it is promised but never attained—Hamacher analyzes nine decisive themes, topics, and texts of modernity: the hermeneutic circle in Schleiermacher and Heidegger, the structure of ethical commands in Kant, Nietzsche's genealogy of moral terms and his exploration of the aporias of singularity, the irony of reading in de Man, the parabasis of positing acts in Fichte and Schlegel, Kleist's disruption of narrative representation, the gesture of naming in Benjamin and Kafka, and the incisive caesura that Paul Celan inserts into temporal and linguistic reversals. There is no book that so fully brings the issues of both critical philosophy and critical literature into reach. Reviews "Werner Hamacher's Premises is the heir and successor to the most important theoretical and critical work done in American departments of comparative literature from the 1960s through the 1980s. Yet, Premises is no more a work of literary scholarship than one of philosophical submission to philosophy. With the gesture that is genuinely called post-structural, which is the suspicion and suspension of every code, the book's act of freedom is freedom to read and write language tout court." —Timothy Bahti, University of Michigan "Hamacher's project can be described as the retracing of the epistemological ground upon which the modern conception of the literary was erected. It is quite clear to me that there is nothing presently available to rival this book." —Wlad Godzich, University of Geneva

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The first English-language study devoted to Hölderlin's novel in three decades, this book reveals Hyperion's literary and philosophical richness and its complex ties with politics, choreography, and economics. While few would question the importance of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) for the development of German idealism and twentieth-century literature, philosophy, and critical theory, Hölderlin scholarship remains largely inaccessible to those working in English. This is especially true for his novel Hyperion - otherwise his most accessible work - which has not had a book-length study in English devoted to it in more than three decades. Anthony Curtis Adler opens Hölderlin's novel up to the reader by stressing its literary uniqueness, philosophical riches, complex ties with contemporaneous discourses, and relevance to contemporary Continental political theory. Neither merely a stepping-stone to his later and more esoteric poetry, nor a novelistic presentation of an idealist dialectics, Hyperion offers a powerful new vision of the relation between poetry, political economy, and philosophical truth. Poetry, for Hölderlin, anticipates forms of political life that have only been obscurely glimpsed; rather than imitating a luminously given idea of the Good, it patiently guides toward a dimly sensed better world. Thus it replaces the Platonic philosopher-king with the poetic leader of the dance. Yet in just this way, Adler shows, Hyperion's project converges with a constellation of quintessentially "modern" discourses and practices, including the codification of dance in early modernity and the rise of political economy in the 18th century. Readers will discover the "choreographic" logic underlying both of these - and, with this, a new way to think about the relations between literature, politics, economics, and dance.

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Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice—which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion—Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago.

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Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice—which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion—Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago.

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Two Studies of Friedrich Hölderlin shows how the poet enacts a radical theory of meaning that culminates in a unique and still groundbreaking concept of revolution, one that begins with a revolutionary understanding of language. The product of an intense engagement with both Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, the book presents Werner Hamacher's major attempts at developing a critical practice commensurate with the immensity of Hölderlin's late writings. These essays offer an incisive and innovative combination of critical theory and deconstruction while also identifying where influential critics like Heidegger fail to do justice to the poet's astonishing radicality. Readers will not only come away with a new appreciation of Hölderlin's poetic and political-theoretical achievements but will also discover the motivating force behind Hamacher's own achievements as a literary scholar and political theorist. An introduction by Julia Ng and an afterword by Peter Fenves provide further information about these studies and the academic and theoretical context in which they were composed.

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Two Studies of Friedrich Hölderlin shows how the poet enacts a radical theory of meaning that culminates in a unique and still groundbreaking concept of revolution, one that begins with a revolutionary understanding of language. The product of an intense engagement with both Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, the book presents Werner Hamacher's major attempts at developing a critical practice commensurate with the immensity of Hölderlin's late writings. These essays offer an incisive and innovative combination of critical theory and deconstruction while also identifying where influential critics like Heidegger fail to do justice to the poet's astonishing radicality. Readers will not only come away with a new appreciation of Hölderlin's poetic and political-theoretical achievements but will also discover the motivating force behind Hamacher's own achievements as a literary scholar and political theorist. An introduction by Julia Ng and an afterword by Peter Fenves provide further information about these studies and the academic and theoretical context in which they were composed.

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