Philosopher, literary critic, translator (of Nietzsche and Benjamin), Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is one of the leading intellectual figures in France. This volume of six essays deals with the relation between philosophy and aesthetics, particularly the role of mimesis in a metaphysics of representation, and is introduced by Jacques Derrida.

The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy. Preface: The. Literary. Absolute. I. "There are classifications that are bad enough as classifications, but that have nonetheless dominated entire ...

What interests us and claims our attention in Nazism is, essentially, its ideology, in the definition Hannah Arendt has given of this term in her book on The Origins of Totalitarianism. In this work, ideology is defined as the totally self-fulfilling logic of an idea, an idea “by which the movement of history is explained as one consistent process.” “The movement of history and the logical process of this notion,” Arendt continues, “are supposed to correspond to each other, so that (...) whatever happens, happens according to the logic of one ‘idea.’”2Ideology, in other words, interests us and claims our attention insofar as, on the one hand, it always proposes itself as a political explanation of the world, that is, as an explanation of history on the basis of a single concept—the concept of race, for example, or the concept of class—and insofar as, on the other hand, this ideological explanation or conception of the world seeks to be a total explanation or conception. This totality signifies that the explanation is indisputable, leaving neither gaps nor remainders—unlike philosophical thought, from which ideology shamelessly draws the greater part of its resources but which is characterized by a risky, problematic style, what Arendt calls the “insecurity” of philosophical questioning . 2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism , p. 469; hereafter abbreviated OT. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy teach at the University of Human Sciences of Strasbourg, France, and are also visiting professors at the University of California, Berkeley. They are coauthors of The Literary Absolute and, related to the topic of politics, “The Jewish People Don’t Dream” . Lacoue-Labarthe is also the author of Typography and La Fiction du politique . Nancy has written “Sharing Voices” in Transforming Hermeneutics and La Communauté désoeuvrée . Brian Holmes is a doctoral candidate in romance languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of the journal Qui Parle. He is currently at work on the parody of authorial identity in Cervantes and Flaubert. (shrink)

This collection of essays presents, for the first time in English, some of the key essays on the political by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. Including several unpublished essays, _Retreating the Political_ offers some highly original perspectives on the relationship between philosophy and the political. Through contemporary readings of the political in Freud, Heidegger and Marx, the authors ask if we can talk of an _a priori_ link between the philosophical and the political; they investigate the significance of the 'figure' (...) - the human being as political subject - in the history of metaphysics; and they inquire how we can 're-treat' the political today in the face of those who argue that philosophy is at an 'end'. (shrink)

This collection of essays presents, for the first time in English, some of the key essays on the political by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. Including several unpublished essays, _Retreating the Political_ offers some highly original perspectives on the relationship between philosophy and the political. Through contemporary readings of the political in Freud, Heidegger and Marx, the authors ask if we can talk of an _a priori_ link between the philosophical and the political; they investigate the significance of the 'figure' (...) - the human being as political subject - in the history of metaphysics; and they inquire how we can 're-treat' the political today in the face of those who argue that philosophy is at an 'end'. (shrink)

Lacoue-Labarthe's Poetry as Experience addresses the question of a lyric language that would not be the expression of subjectivity. In his analysis of the historical position of Paul Celan's poetry, Lacoue-Labarthe defines the subject as the principle that founds, organizes, and secures both cognition and action—a principle that turned, most violently during the twentieth century, into a figure not only of domination but of the extermination of everything other than itself. This thoroughly universal, abstract, and finally suicidal subject eradicates all (...) experience, save the singularity of this experience of voiding. But what is left, as Paul Celan insisted, is a remainder to the lyric voice alone: Singbarer Rest. -/- Lacoue-Labarthe's detailed analyses of two decisive poems by Celan, "Tübingen, Jänner" and "Todtnauberg"—the one a response to Hölderlin, the other to Heidegger—and his sustained reading of "The Meridian" present Celan's verse of singularity as the movement at and beyond the border of generalizable experience, i.e., as an experience, a traversing of a dangerous field, in which language no longer dominates anything, but rather commemorates the voiding of concepts and the collapse of the constitutive powers of the subject. For Lacoue-Labarthe, poetry after the Shoah, the poetry of bared singularity, is no longer a poetry that would correspond to the concept of the subject—or, for that matter, to the concept of poetry—but is rather the language of the decept. Only by being disappointed of the heroic language of idealistic poetry, and of the mytho-ontological tendencies of philosophy, can Celan's poetry keep open the possibility of another history, another future. (shrink)

This book is a close reading of Jacques Lacan's seminal essay, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud," selected for the particular light it casts on Lacan's complex relation to linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It clarifies the way Lacan renews or transforms the psychoanalytic field, through his diversion of Saussure's theory of the sign, his radicalization of Freud's fundamental concepts, and his subversion of dominant philosophical values. The authors argue, however, that Lacan's discourse is marked (...) by a deep ambiguity: while he invents a new "language," he nonetheless maintains the traditional metaphysical motifs of systemacity, foundation, and truth. (shrink)

Heidegger's politically motivated use of poetry and its relation to currents of modern thought.

Something … happened … in the first half of this century, and the second half, hovering between nightmare and parody, is only its shadow. Even so we must take its measure. Not on a small scale, based on the last three or four centuries…. But since philosophy, even in its possibility, is at stake, the true assessment, incalculable as it is, of the entire history of the West is needed. And that is another matter altogether.We know that this other matter (...) was, at the time, the Heidegger affair…. Since Nietzsche no thinker has delved so deeply and so far into the question of the essence of philosophy , nor has there been anyone who has opened a dialogue of such breadth and rigor with the tradition of the West. Nonetheless, a detail concerning this subject requires our attention: to subscribe, as I do, to Heidegger’s theses , or even to grant a primary place to his thought, does not amount to any kind of declaration or profession of “Heideggerianism,” as it is called…. Strictly speaking, the idea of a “Heideggerianism” is meaningless. It is not out of coyness or inconsistency that Heidegger constantly reminded us that “there is no philosophy of Heidegger.” This clearly was an expression of his own question in condensed form: the question of Being could not in any way produce a new thesis on Being or, even less, give rise to any sort of “concept of the world.” … Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe teaches philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. His books include The Literary Absolute , Le Sujet de la philosophie, L’imitation des moderns, and, most recently, La Fiction du politique, forthcoming in an English translation from Basil Blackwell Press. Paula Wissing is a free-lance translator and editor. She has recently translated Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (shrink)

Actes du colloque organisé dans la troisième décade de juillet 1980, au Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle. L’enjeu étant que « le travail de Jacques Derrida n’en soit pas l’objet mais le prétexte ou l’occasion ». Dirigé par Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe et Jean-Luc Nancy, le fil conducteur en est « l’implication que peut avoir une question des « “fins de l’homme” » dans le travail de Derrida ou pour son travail. Son ambition aura été de traverser et de déplacer en tous (...) sens les régimes philosophique, littéraire, critique, poétique, signifiant, symbolique, etc. Avec des contributions, entre autres, de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Sarah Kofman, Sylviane Agacinski, Jean-François Lyotard, Louis Marin, Luce Irigaray, Denir Hollier, et Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

In February of 1988, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe came together in Heidelberg before a large audience to discuss, in French, the philosophical and political implications of Martin Heidegger's thought, particularly in light of the philosopher's engagement in Nazism. This book presents a transcription and translation of their reflections and exchanges with the audience.

Les écritures du quotidien sont aujourd’hui bien souvent affaire de femmes ; celles-ci recueillent, sauvent et agencent l’éphémère patrimoine mémoriel qui, sans le secours de quelque sœur, tante ou vieille cousine, serait voué à l’oubli. Véritables « machines à écrire familiales », selon la formule chère à Bernard Lahire, les femmes notent, archivent et mettent en forme les traces d’un passé ordinaire qui prend tout son sens à la faveur de leurs commentaires et gardent la famille en vie. Avan...

De longues années après sa création, l’État d’Israël a bénéficié d’une réputation flatteuse : des images récurrentes de femmes labourant la terre, pavant des routes, effectuant des travaux de maçonnerie ou montant la garde dans les colonies agricoles créées par les pionniers juifs à partir des années 1880 ont laissé croire à l’émergence d’une société où hommes et femmes vivraient en parfaite égalité. Pourtant, lettres, journaux intimes, mémoires, récits de toutes sortes laissés par des femmes restées anonymes ou au contraire (...) devenues célèbres viennent renverser cette image idyllique ; la Palestine juive n’y apparaît nullement comme un havre d’harmonie entre hommes et femmes. Bien plus, le pays supposé du lait et du miel est une terre hostile, où la vie est difficile pour tous et que beaucoup quittent, par l’émigration ou le suicide… À travers ces textes, l’imagerie qui entoure l’expérience sioniste en Palestine se trouve profondément ébranlée. Et c’est une nouvelle histoire qui peut s’écrire…. (shrink)

De longues années après sa création, l’État d’Israël a bénéficié d’une réputation flatteuse : des images récurrentes de femmes labourant la terre, pavant des routes, effectuant des travaux de maçonnerie ou montant la garde dans les colonies agricoles créées par les pionniers juifs à partir des années 1880 ont laissé croire à l’émergence d’une société où hommes et femmes vivraient en parfaite égalité. Pourtant, lettres, journaux intimes, mémoires, récits de toutes sortes laissés par des femmes restées anonymes ou au contraire (...) devenues célèbres viennent renverser cette image idyllique ; la Palestine juive n’y apparaît nullement comme un havre d’harmonie entre hommes et femmes. Bien plus, le pays supposé du lait et du miel est une terre hostile, où la vie est difficile pour tous et que beaucoup quittent, par l’émigration ou le suicide… À travers ces textes, l’imagerie qui entoure l’expérience sioniste en Palestine se trouve profondément ébranlée. Et c’est une nouvelle histoire qui peut s’écrire…. (shrink)

Dans la préface qu’elle donne au livre de son ancienne doctorante (2008), Françoise Thébaud souligne qu’il s’agit là d’une « histoire sociale et genrée des politiques nationales d’immigration et de naturalisation, et des pratiques administratives qui les mettent en œuvre », à partir du cas de Marseille, au cours des dernières années de la Troisième République (1918-1940). Linda Guerry s’attelle à cette tâche en se confrontant à des milliers de documents puisés dans les fonds archivistiques pa...

Cet article propose une lecture transdisciplinaire de l’œuvre de l’autrice turco-allemande Emine Sevgi Özdamar (née en 1946). Grâce à une approche à la fois historienne et littéraire de la trilogie Sonne auf halbem Weg : die Istanbul-Berlin Trilogie (Soleil à mi-chemin : la trilogie Istanbul-Berlin), nous cherchons à interroger le récit à la première personne d’un parcours migratoire au féminin qui échappe aux catégories littéraires traditionnelles, entre autobiographie, roman et témoignage. Plutôt que de définir de nouveaux critères de classification, cet (...) article entend montrer l’apport d’un texte littéraire qui prend en compte le prisme du genre à la construction d’un discours historique alternatif, en rupture avec l’historiographie dominante de l’époque sur les Gastarbeiter (travailleurs invités allemands) en République fédérale d’Allemagne (seconde moitié du xxe siècle). (shrink)

Différents textes de Margaret Fuller et Elizabeth Cady Stanton, deux féministes américaines parfois oubliées de l’historiographie au profit notamment de Susan B. Anthony (dont le nom reste associé à l’amendement qui a accordé, aux États-Unis, le droit de vote aux femmes) ont récemment fait l’objet de traductions en français et d’une édition critique éclairante. Si la lecture parallèle de leurs textes fait apparaître des traits communs entre les deux militantes, parcours et convictions présent...

Différents textes de Margaret Fuller et Elizabeth Cady Stanton, deux féministes américaines parfois oubliées de l’historiographie au profit notamment de Susan B. Anthony (dont le nom reste associé à l’amendement qui a accordé, aux États-Unis, le droit de vote aux femmes) ont récemment fait l’objet de traductions en français et d’une édition critique éclairante. Si la lecture parallèle de leurs textes fait apparaître des traits communs entre les deux militantes, parcours et convictions présent...

The scene of origin -- Anterior theater.

"The Subject of Philosophy" presents a sustained examination of the relation between literature and philosophy with special emphasis on the problem of the subject and of representation. Spanning the history of philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, and addressing such major moments in the history of literature as Greek tragedy and German romanticism, The book repeatedly raises the question whether philosophy's very attempts to distinguish itself from literature are not conditioned and exceeded by a fundamental (...) inextricability of the two. In these readings, Lacoue-Labarthe focuses on such issues as the nature of fiction and of figurative language, the fate of the "work", the status of the author, the question of madness, and the definition of gender. He broaches as well the analysis of mimesis, the most important concept of his later work and one that already gives to his persistent aesthetic preoccupations an ethical and political resonance. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is the author of many books, including "Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics", "Heidegger, Art and Politics", and, with Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Literary Absolute". This book is intended for those in the fields of literary theory, philosophy. (shrink)