This book, written out of Derrida's long-standing friendship with Jean-Luc Nancy, examines the central place accorded to the sense of touch in the Western philosophical tradition.
How have we thought “the body”? How can we think it anew? The body of mortal creatures, the body politic, the body of letters and of laws, the “mystical body of Christ”—all these (and others) are incorporated in the word Corpus, the title and topic of Jean-Luc Nancy’s masterwork. Corpus is a work of literary force at once phenomenological, sociological, theological, and philosophical in its multiple orientations and approaches. In thirty-six brief sections, Nancy offers us at once an encyclopedia and a polemical program—reviewing classical takes on the “corpus” from Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Paul to Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, and Freud, while demonstrating that the mutations (technological, biological, and political) of our own culture have given rise to the need for a new understanding of the body. He not only tells the story of this cultural change but also explores the promise and responsibilities that such a new understanding entails. The long-awaited English translation is a bold, bravura rendering. To the title essay are added five closely related recent pieces—including a commentary by Antonia Birnbaum—dedicated in large part to the legacy of the “mind-body problem” formulated by Descartes and the challenge it poses to rethinking the ancient problems of the corpus. The last and most poignant of these essays is “The Intruder,” Nancy’s philosophical meditation on his heart transplant. The book also serves as the opening move in Nancy’s larger project called “The deconstruction of Christianity.”
This book—the culmination of forty years of friendship between J. Hillis Miller and Jacques Derrida, during which Miller also closely followed all Derrida’s writings and seminars—is “for Derrida” in two senses. It is “for him,” dedicated to his memory. The chapters also speak, in acts of reading, as advocates for Derrida’s work. They focus especially on Derrida’s late work, including passages from the last, as yet unpublished, seminars. The chapters are “partial to Derrida,” on his side, taking his part, gratefully submitting themselves to the demand made by Derrida’s writings to be read—slowly, carefully, faithfully, with close attention to semantic detail. The chapters do not progress forward to tell a sequential story. They are, rather, a series of perspectives on the heterogeneity of Derrida’s work, or forays into that heterogeneity. The chief goal has been, to borrow a phrase from Wallace Stevens, “plainly to propound” what Derrida says. The book aims, above all, to render Derrida’s writings justice. It should be remembered, however, that, according to Derrida himself, every rendering of justice is also a transformative interpretation. A book like this one is not a substitute for reading Derrida for oneself. It is to be hoped that it will encourage readers to do just that.
Originally written for an exhibition Nancy curated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon in 2007, the text addresses the medium of drawing in light of form in its formation, of form as a formative force, opening drawing to questions of pleasure and desire.
This introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy gives an overview of his philosophical thought to date and situates it within the broader context of contemporary French and European thinking. The book examines Nancy’s philosophy in relation to five specific areas: his account of subjectivity; his understanding of space and spatiality; his thinking about the body and embodiment; his political thought; and his contribution to contemporary aesthetics. In each case it shows the way in which Nancy develops or moves beyond some of the key concerns associated with phenomenology, post-structuralism, and what could broadly be termed the “post-modern.”
Christian parables have retained their force well beyond the sphere of religion; indeed, they share with much of modern literature their status as a form of address: Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.There is no message without there first being-or, more subtly, without there also being in the message itself-an address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening. This is not an exhortation of the kind Pay attention!Rather, it is a warning: if you do not understand, the message will go away.The scene in the Gospel of John in which the newly risen Christ enjoins the Magdalene, Noli me tangere,a key moment in the general parable made up of his life, is a particularly good example of this sudden appearance in which a vanishing plays itself out. Resurrected, he speaks, makes an appeal, and leaves.Do not touch me.Beyond the Christ story, this everyday phrase says something important about touching in general. It points to the place where touching must not touch in order to carry out its touch (its art, its tact, its grace). The title essay of this volume is both a contribution to Nancy's project of a deconstruction of Christianityand an exemplum of his remarkable writings on art, in analyses of Noli me tangerepaintings by such painters as Rembrandt, Drer, Titian, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Correggio. It is also in tacit dialogue with Jacques Derrida's monumental tribute to Nancy's work in Le toucher-Jean-Luc Nancy.For the English-language edition, Nancy has added an unpublished essay on the Magdalene and the English translation of In Heaven and on the Earth,a remarkable lecture he gave in a series designed to address children between six and twelve years of age. Closely aligned with his entire project of the deconstruction of Christianity,'this lecture may give the most accesible account of his ideas about God.
This second volume in Nancy's The Deconstruction of Christianity explores the stance or bearing that would be appropriate for us now, in the wake of the dis-enclosure of religion and the retreat of God: that of adoration. Adoration is stretched out toward things, but without phenomenological intention. In our present historical time, we have come to see relation itself as the divine. The address and exclamation--the salut!--that constitutes adoration celebrates this relation: both the relation among all beings that the world is and what is beyond relation, the outside of the world that opens us in the midst of the world. A major contribution to the contemporary philosophy of religion, Adoration clarifies and builds upon not only Dis-Enclosure, the first volume in this project, but also Nancy's other previous writings on sense, the world, and the singular plurality of being.
Nancy’s classic study of the role of language in Kant demonstrates why the question of how to write philosophy, of philosophical style, is not just ancillary to critical philosophy but goes to the heart of the project of establishing human reason in its autonomy and freedom.
Before now, Jean-Luc Nancy's contributions to legal and political theory have been largely overlooked and lacking the in-depth appraisal they deserve. In this unique collection, eighteen notable Nancy scholars contextualize Nancy's work in these areas within the broad corpus of his other concerns. By emphasizing the originality of his theories in a globalizing age, each distinctive chapter provides a new and valuable insight into Nancy's legal and political philosophy. Together with his work on sense, community and art, these cutting edge contributions examine Nancy's conceptions of justice, legality and world in conjunction with the interpretation and rationality of: · The ontology of the event. · The form of relationality. · The effects of globalization. · The importance of Christianity in contemporary legal and political theory. Including a brand new essay by Nancy himself, this collection marks an important and timely step in a rich area of study.
Drawing on the work of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, Cinema and Contact investigates the aesthe-tics and politics of touch in the cinema of three of the most prominent and distinctive filmmakers to have emerged in France during the last fifty years: Robert Bresson, Marguerite Duras and Claire Denis. Countering the domi-nant critical account of touch elaborated by recent models of embodied spectatorship, this book argues that cinema offers a privileged space for understanding touch in terms of spacing and withdrawal rather than immediacy and continuity. Such a deconstructive configuration of touch is shown here to have far-reaching implications, inviting an innovative rethinking of politics, aesthetics and theology via the textures of cinema. The first study to bring the thought of Nancy into sustained dialogue with a series of detailed analyses of films, Cinema and Contact also forges new interpretative perspectives on Bresson, Duras and Denis, tracing a compelling two-way exchange between cinema and philosophy.