On Creaturely Life

Eric L. Santner

ISBN 10: 0226735036 / ISBN 13: 9780226735030

Edité par University Of Chicago Press Jun 2006, 2006

A propos de cet article

Neuware - In his 'Duino Elegies,' Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being--the open--concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges--what Eric Santner calls the 'creaturely'--have a biopolitical aspect: they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority. Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald's entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person's history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors. An indispensable book for students of Sebald, 'On Creaturely Life' is also a significant contribution to critical theory.

N° de réf. du vendeur 9780226735030

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: On Creaturely Life
• Éditeur: University Of Chicago Press Jun 2006
• Date de parution: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0226735036
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780226735030
• Reliure: Taschenbuch
• État de l'article: Neu
• Dimensions: 215 L x 142 H x 19 P (en millimètres) 215 millimètres de largeur par 142 millimètres de hauteur par 19 millimètres de profondeur
• Poids: 328 grammes

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

In his Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being—the open—concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges—what Eric Santner calls the creaturely—have a biopolitical aspect: they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority.

Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors.

An indispensable book for students of Sebald, On Creaturely Life is also a significant contribution to critical theory.

À propos de l?auteur

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books and coauthor of Sovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment, also published by the University of Chicago Press.