In this volume thirteen scholars of literature and philosophy take up the challenge presented by Werner Hamacher's 95 Theses on Philology. At the close, he responds to them. It might seem unlikely at first that his brief initial publication on such a venerable scholarly discipline as philology should be heard as an unmistakable challenge, issued to us students and teachers of language and literature today, calling attention to the institutional constraints that bear on our work now and to the dangers that threaten it. For philology usually designates nothing more dramatic than the scholarly study of classical and modern languages and literatures in their historical and cultural contexts. However, in Hamacher's hands, philology becomes a paleonomy: an old word kept in order to initiate a new concept. If Hamacher's idea of philology helps us to consider the current state of our work and our institutions, it is because it is paleonomically inscribed in a tradition which it also interrupts and transforms. Hamacher's philology parts with the tradition precisely in order to remain faithful to its radical, but increasingly occluded, core.
The contributors to this volume try out Hamacher's loyal way of breaking with philology. Each in her or his own manner dwells on a particular word, thought or train of thought marking Hamacher's Theses. From a variety of perspectives, thirteen authors answer Hamacher by attempting a philological practice that does not take language as an object of knowledge, of study, or even of love, but attends in language to that which, because it cannot ever be an object of any kind, awakens an unfamiliar desire. Contributors include Susan Bernstein, Michele Cohen-Hamili, Peter Fenves, Werner Hamacher, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Sean Gurd, Paul North, Jan Plug, Marc Redfield, Gerhard Richter, Avital Ronell, Thomas Schestag, Ann Smock, and Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei.
- ISBN10 0823268624
- ISBN13 9780823268627
- Publish Date 1 February 2016
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Fordham University Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 208
- Language English