A weak Messianic power : figures of a time to come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan / Michael G. Levine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levine, Michael G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Benjamin, Walter.

Celan, Paul.

Derrida, Jacques.

Messianism--History.

Messianism.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 177 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2014.

Summary:

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. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 A Time to Come: Hunchbacked Theology, Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis, and Historical Materialism 1

2 The Day the Sun Stood Still: Benjamin's Theses, Celan's Realignments, Trauma, and the Eichmann Trial 14

3 Pendant: Celan, Büchner, and the Terrible Voice of the Meridian 37

4 On the Stroke of Circumcision I: Derrida, Celan, and the Covenant of the Word 63

5 On the Stroke of Circumcision II: Celan, Kafka, and the Wound in the Name 80

6 Poetry's Demands and Abrahamic Sacrifice: Celan's Poems for Eric 97.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-171) and index.

ISBN:

9780823255108

0823255107

9780823255115

0823255115

OCLC:

862148909