Language And Death : The Place of Negativity

A formidable and influential work, Language and Death sheds a highly original light on issues central to Continental philosophy, literary theory, deconstruction, hermeneutics, and speech-act theory. Focusing especially on the incompatible philosophical systems of Hegel and Heidegger within the space of negativity, Giorgio Agamben offers a rigorous reading of numerous philosophical and poetic works to examine how these issues have been traditionally explored. Agamben argues that the human being is not just "speaking" and "mortal" but irreducibly "social" and "ethical."Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Means without End (2000), Stanzas (1993), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press. Karen E. Pinkus is professor of French and Italian at the University of Southern California. Michael Hardt is professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University.

* Preface

* Introduction

* The First Day Dasein and death. The problem of the origin of negativity. Nothing and the Not. The word: Da-Sein: Being-the-there. Negativity reaches Being-there from its own there. Man as the placeholder of nothing. Hegel and Heidegger.

* The Second Day Eleusis. Hegel and the unspeakable. The liquidation of sensory consciousness in the first chapter of the Phenomenology. We do not say what we mean. The dialectic of the This. The Eleusinian mystery in the Phenomenology. The unspeakable and language. Every word says the ineffable. The This and initiation into the negative. - Excursus 1 (between the second and third days) Aristotle, the This, and the first essence. To then Binai. Showing and saying.

* The Third Day The there and the This. The problem of the significance of pronoms. Grammar and logic. The pronoun and the transcendentia. The problem of indication. Pronouns as shifters. The taking place of language. The dimension of meaning of pronouns and the problem of being. Shifters as the linguistic structure of transcendence. - Excursus 2 (between the third and fourth days) 27 Grammar and theology. The narre of God. Mysticism and the unnamable narre.

* The Fourth Day The place of language and negativity. The voice and the problem of indication. The dimension of meaning of the voice. Augustine and the dead word. Gaunilo and the thought of the voice atone. Roscelin and the breath of voice. The other Voice: the taking place of language as originary articulation. The Voice as chronothesis: the taking place of language and temporality. The Voice as negative foundation and as the place of negativity. - Excursus 3 (between the fourth and fifth days) 38 What is in the voice? The hermeneutic cercle of the interpretation. Derrida and the gramma. Grammatology as fundamentology.

* The Fifth Day Hegel and the Voice. The Voice of death. "Every animal fends a voice in violent death." The voice/language dialectic and the master/slave dialectic. The master's enjoyment and the Voice. The Voice as originary articulation of the negative. - Excursus 4 (between the fifth and sixth days) 49 Bataille and disengaged negativity. Two letters between Kojève and Bataille.

* The Sixth Day Heidegger and the Voice. Language is not the voice of human beings. Man is in the place of language without a voice. Somme and Stimmung. Thought of death and thought of the Voice. The Voice as the voice of Being. - Excursus 5 (between the sixth and seventh days) 63 The mythogeme of the Voice in late antique mysticism. The figure of Sige in Valentinian gnosis. Silence as the dwelling of logos in God.

* The Seventh Day The experience of the taking place of the word in poetry. The topics and the events of language. The taking place of the word as love in the Provencal poets. Razo de trobar and ars inveniendi. The lived and the poeticized. The tenzo de non-re of Aimeric de Peguilhan. A reading of Leopardi's L'infinito. The significance of the metrical-musical element in poetry. The Muse as an experience of the ungraspability of the place of the word. Poetry and philosophy. Verse and prose. A return to the idyll of Leopardi. - Excursus 6 (between the seventh and eighth days) Leonardo and nothingness.

* The Eighth Day The Voice as original metaphysical articulation between nature and logos. Signifying and showing. The status of the phoneme. The essential relation between language and death as Voice. Logic and ethics. The Voice as pure meaning (nothingness) and as ethical element. The unity of logic and ethics as sigetics. The negative ground and ungrounded knowledge. Philosophy and tragedy. Philosophy as a return to tragic conscience. The Voice and mysticism. The problem of nihilism. The Absolute and the Voice. The *se. Ethos and daimon. The monologue of the last philosopher. The end of the relation between language and death. The unborn and the never existing. - Excursus 7 Cafter the final day) The thought of lime. The having-been in Hegel and in Heidegger. The Absolute and Ereignis. The absolute Voice. The unspeakable handing-down. The end of history in Hegel and Heidegger. The having-been and the never existing. History without destiny. The problem of sacrifice. The foundation of violence and the violence of the foundation.

* Epilogue

* Bibliography

* Index

* About the Author and Translators