Synopses & Reviews
In
Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud made abundantly clear what he thought about the biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and then elaborated in Christian teachings, to love one's neighbor as oneself. and#8220;Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it,and#8221; he proposed, and#8220;as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment.and#8221; After the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and Stalinism, Leviticus 19:18 seems even less conceivableand#8212;but all the more urgent nowand#8212;than Freud imagined.
In The Neighbor, three of the most significant intellectuals working in psychoanalysis and critical theory collaborate to show how this problem of neighbor-love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and that suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In and#8220;Toward a Political Theology of the Neighbor,and#8221; Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl Schmittand#8217;s political theology of the enemy and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In and#8220;Miracles Happen,and#8221; Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor-love through a bracing reassessment of Benjamin and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical violence, Slavoj and#381;iand#382;ekand#8217;s and#8220;Neighbors and Other Monstersand#8221; reconsiders the idea of excess to rehabilitate a positive sense of the inhuman and challenge the influence of Levinas on contemporary ethical thought.
A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and hate, self and other, personal and political, The Neighbor has proven to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial text for understanding the persistence of political theology in secular modernity. This new edition contains a new preface by the authors.
Review
"Agamben's intuition, chronicle and meditation are fascinating."The Review of Politics
Review
“Agambens intuition, chronicle and meditation are fascinating.”The Review of Politics“The story of homo sacer is certainly worth reading because of its suggestiveness and provocations.”Modernism/Modernity
Review
"The story of homo sacer is certainly worth reading because of its suggestiveness and provocations."Modernism/Modernity
Review
and#8220;All three [essays] are important contributions to the development of new ways to think about sovereignty, otherness, materiality, and the political possibilities encased in the present. . . .and#160;Each unfolds through complex and nuanced engagements with key texts in political theology, psychoanalysis, ethics, and contemporary philosophy.and#8221;
Review
"The Neighbor is a valuable intervention into our contemporary intellectual and political history. These three essays creatively marshal the resources of psychoanalytic theory to address some of today's most challenging questions about individual identity, communal solidarity, and cultural conflict. In their neighborly thinking together, and#381;iand#382;ek, Santner, and Reinhard constitute a powerful trio of advocates for reconceptualizing and redeploying neighbor-love to critique friend-enemy relations in national and global politics. This is a truly remarkable book."
Synopsis
The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italys most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it.
In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucaults fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotles notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over “life” is implicit.
The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitts idea of the sovereigns status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective “naked life” of all individuals.
Synopsis
One of Italy's most original philosophers aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding.
Synopsis
“Agambens intuition, chronicle and meditation are fascinating.”—The Review of Politics
“The story of homo sacer is certainly worth reading because of its suggestiveness and provocations.”—Modernism/Modernity
About the Author
Slavoj and#381;iand#382;ek is professor of philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. His numerous books include Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle and The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, professor of Germanic studies, and a member of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald and The Royal Remains: The Peopleand#8217;s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Kenneth Reinhard is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also directed the Center for Jewish Studies. He is coauthor of After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis.
Table of Contents
Introduction; Part I. The Logic of Sovereignty: 1. The paradox of sovereignty; 2. 'Nomos Basileus'; 3. Potentiality and law; 4. Form of law; Threshold; Part II. Homo Sacer: 1. Homo sacer; 2. The ambivalence of the sacred; 3. Sacred life; 4. 'Vitae Necisque Potestas'; 5. Sovereign body and sacred body; 6. The ban and the wolf; Threshold; Part III. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern: 1. The politicization of life; 2. Biopolitics and the rights of man; 3. Life that does not deserve to live; 4. 'Politics, or giving form to the life of a people'; 5. VP; 6. Politicizing death; 7. The camp as the 'Nomos' of the modern; Threshold; Bibliography; Index of names.