- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Verso Press USA; 1 edition (Dec 26 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1844675718
- ISBN-13: 978-1844675715
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.1 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #288,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Giorgio Agamben is possibly the most delicate and probing thinker since Walter Benjamin." - Avrital Ronell, University of California, Berkeley"
Product Description
How andwhy did experience and knowledge become separated? Is it possible totalk of an infancy of experience, a dumb experience? For WalterBenjamin, the poverty of experience was a characteristic ofmodernity, originating in the catastrophe of the First World War. ForGiorgio Agamben, the Italian editor of Benjamin s complete works, thedestruction of experience no longer needs catastrophes: daily life inany modern city will suffice.
Agamben'sprofound and radical exploration of language, infancy, and everydaylife traces concepts of experience through Kant, Hegel, Husserl andBenveniste. In doing so he elaborates a theory of infancy that throwsnew light on a number of major themes in contemporary thought: theanthropological opposition between nature and culture; the linguisticopposition between speech and language; the birth of the subject andthe appearance of the unconscious. Agamben goes on to consider time andhistory; the Marxist notion of base and superstructure (via a carefulreading of the famous Adorno Benjamin correspondence on Baudelaire'sParis); and the difference between rituals and games.
Beautifullywritten, erudite and provocative, these essays will be of greatinterest to students of philosophy, linguistics, anthropology andpolitics.
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3.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but not urgent, Oct 6 2009
By DA - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: Infancy And History (Paperback)
This relatively short book reads like a collection of essays rather than a unified whole. Agamben is clearly very intelligent and a good writer, but I am not convinced that he is the 'next great critical theorist' many claim him to be.The best chapter here is about a series of letters between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Agamben argues in favor of Benjamin's method, a view I'm partial to. There are other interesting moments throughout but also a lot of grappling with the canon, a necessary task for professional Continental Philosophers, perhaps, but not necessarily compelling reading for the rest of us.
This book could be read alongside Derrida's 'The Politics of Friendship'.
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