A Weak Messianic Power: Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan - Couverture souple

Levine, Michael G.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0823255115 ISBN 13 : 9780823255115

Editeur : Fordham University Press, 2013

Synopsis

In his famous theses on the philosophy of history, Benjamin writes: "We have been endowed with a weak messianic power to which the past has a claim." This claim addresses us not just from the past but from what will have belonged to it only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. For Benajmin, as for Celan and Derrida, what has never been actualized remains with us, not as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. Because such appeals do not pass through normal channels of communication, they require a special attunement, perhaps even a mode of unconscious receptivity. Levine examines the ways in which this attunement is cultivated in Benjamin's philosophical, autobiographical, and photohistorical writings; Celan's poetry and poetological addresses; and Derrida's writings on Celan.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Michael G. Levine is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He is the author of Belated Witness: Literature, Testimony, and the Question of Holocaust Survival.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Fordham University Press
• Date d'édition: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0823255115
• ISBN 13: 9780823255115
• Reliure: Broché
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 192
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible