Synopses & Reviews
Constellation is the first extended exploration of the relationship between Walter Benjamin, the Weimar-era revolutionary cultural critic, and the radical philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The affinity between these noncontemporaneous thinkers serves as a limit case manifesting the precariousness and potentials of cultural transmission in a disillusioned present.
In five chapters, Constellation presents the changing figure of Nietzsche as Benjamin encountered him: an inspiration to his student activism, an authority for his skeptical philology, a manifestation of his philosophical nihilism, a companion in his political exile, and ultimately a subversive collaborator in his efforts to think beyond the hopeless temporality--new and always the same--of the present moment in history.
By excavating this neglected relationship philologically and elaborating its philosophical implications in the surviving texts of both men, Constellation produces new and compelling readings of their works and through them triangulates a theoretical limit in the present, a fractured "now-time" suspended between madness and suicide, from which the collective future regains a measure of consequential and transformative vitality.
Review
"Not only does McFarland evince himself as an original and compelling interpreter of Nietzsche and Benjamin. He strings key passages together in such a way that his exegetical performance fans out toward both authors, configuring them in an inexorable interface of shared interpretation and critique."--Henry Sussman, Yale University
About the Author
James McFarland is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.
Table of Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations xiii
A Note on Citations xvii
Introduction: Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche 1
The Förster House 1-Affinity 4-Excelsior! 9
1. Mortal Youth 16
A Youthful Facies 16-The Friend 33-Conversation 43- Heinle 49-Abstand 59
2. Presentation 67
Philology 67-Tragedy 74-Hamlet 83-Socrates 89- Silence 93
3. Inscription 103
Pseudomenon 103-Untimeliness 113-Muri 130- "We Philologists" 143-Asyndeton 155
4. Collaboration 167
Shadow 167-Wanderer 174-Correspondence 180- Demon 190-Caesura 198
5. Mad Maturity 208
"Born posthumously" 208-Conspiracy 219- Eternal Return 227-Glück 237-Now-Time 241
Conclusion: Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin 249
Transcendental Medicine 249-The Pawnshop 255- The End of All Things 258
Notes 263
Bibliography 301
Index 311