The art of reconciliation : photography and the conception of dialectics in Benjamin, Hegel, and Derrida / Dag Petersson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Petersson, Dag.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Photography--Philosophy.

Photography.

Dialectic.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Benjamin, Walter.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.

Derrida, Jacques.

Physical Description:

xx, 315 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Hampshire ; New York, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

The Art of Reconciliation offers a comprehensive critique of the philosophy that has dominated 200 years of modern thought, politics, economy, and culture. The basic question is this: Why does modern dialectical metaphysics fail to keep its promises? What is it about dialectics that makes it divide into irreducibly distinct variations of itself, when all it promises is to synthesize, to reconcile, and make whole what is fragmented and alien to itself? An undisciplined power intrinsic to completing reason comes to light through analyses of how dialectical systems begin. Every dialectical philosophy must account for its own birth, and it is at this point, when it also articulates its promise of universal synthesis, that the book discovers a desire for light-writing, or photography. Only the most immediate element - light - can mediate the necessary self-determination of thought at its origin. Light must begin to write. A philosophical critique of dialectics is therefore also a point of departure for a new historical ontology of photography. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I

1 Introduction to a Reality of Dreams 3

2 Image, Remembrance, Awakening: Toward a Dialectics of Intensity 26

3 Correspondences: Postal, Political, and Poetical 49

4 Water: The Revolutionary Element of Reflection and Likeness 74

5 Fantômes, or Death and the Metropolis: Reconciliation as a Shock of History 94

6 Categories of Language, Vision, and Music 111

Part II

7 The Forces of a Preface 131

8 Sacrifice: The Gift to Economy 163

Part III

9 Love and the Difference a Family Makes 199

10 A 232.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137029935

1137029935

OCLC:

818732992