Ebook232 pages5 hours
On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
()
About this ebook
In his Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being—the open—concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges—what Eric Santner calls the creaturely—have a biopolitical aspect: they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority.
Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors.
An indispensable book for students of Sebald, On Creaturely Life is also a significant contribution to critical theory.
Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors.
An indispensable book for students of Sebald, On Creaturely Life is also a significant contribution to critical theory.
Author
Eric L. Santner
Eric L. Santner is the Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago, where he teaches in the Department of Germanic Studies. He is the author of Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film in Postwar Germany.
Read more from Eric L. Santner
My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber's Secret History of Modernity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, with a new Preface Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Royal Remains: The People's Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to On Creaturely Life
Related ebooks
Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIlluminations: Essays and Reflections Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eros and Inwardness in Vienna: Weininger, Musil, Doderer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Walter Benjamin's Grave Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Woman's Estate Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPolitics by Other Means: Selected Criticism from Review 31 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunted Experience: Being, Loss, Memory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Symbolist Movement in Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBenjamin's Passages: Dreaming, Awakening Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConstellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarriage as a Fine Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSoul and Form Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWords Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDéjà Vu and the End of History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"What Is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Origin of the Political: Hannah Arendt or Simone Weil? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoredom and Art: Passions Of The Will To Boredom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA literature of restitution: Critical essays on W. G. Sebald Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weary Sons of Freud Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExpectation: Philosophy, Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Melancholy Science: An Introduction To the Thought Of Theodor W. Adorno Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Philosophy For You
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Four Loves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Experiencing God (2021 Edition): Knowing and Doing the Will of God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Course in Miracles: Text, Workbook for Students, Manual for Teachers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Courage to Be Happy: Discover the Power of Positive Psychology and Choose Happiness Every Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tao Te Ching: Six Translations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Allegory of the Cave Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Man Is an Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for On Creaturely Life
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
On Creaturely Life - Eric L. Santner
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1