| A Weak Messianic Power: Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan Contributor(s): Levine, Michael G. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0823255115 ISBN-13: 9780823255115 Publisher: Fordham University Press OUR PRICE: $32.30 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2013 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Jewish - Philosophy |
| Dewey: 202.3 |
| LCCN: 2013036329 |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (0.60 lbs) 192 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Levine, Michael G.: - Michael G. Levine is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He is the author of Belated Witness: Literature, Testimony, and the Question of Holocaust Survival. |