Weak Messianic Power

Weak Messianic Power

Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan

  • Auteur: Levine, Michael G.
  • Éditeur: Fordham University Press
  • ISBN: 9780823255115
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780823255139
  • eISBN Epub: 9780823255122
  • Lieu de publication:  New York , United States
  • Année de publication: 2013
  • Année de publication électronique: 2013
  • Mois : Novembre
  • Langue: Anglais
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.
  • Cover
  • Contents
  • List of Figures
  • Acknowledgments
  • 1. A Time to Come: Hunchbacked Theology, Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis, and Historical Materialism
  • 2. The Day the Sun Stood Still: Benjamin’s Theses, Celan’s Realignments, Trauma, and the Eichmann Trial
  • 3. Pendant: Celan, Büchner, and the Terrible Voice of the Meridian
  • 4. On the Stroke of Circumcision I: Derrida, Celan, and the Covenant of the Word
  • 5. On the Stroke of Circumcision II: Celan, Kafka, and the Wound in the Name
  • 6. Poetry’s Demands and Abrahamic Sacrifice: Celan’s Poems for Eric
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F
    • G
    • H
    • I
    • J
    • K
    • L
    • M
    • N
    • O
    • P
    • R
    • S
    • T
    • U
    • V
    • W
    • X

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