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    Give the Word
    Responses to Werner Hamacher's "95 Theses on Philology"

    Gerhard Richter (Edited by), Ann Smock (Edited by), Werner Hamacher (Author)

    9781496206527

    Hardback, published 1 June 2019

    432 pages, 1 table, 8 indexes
    22.9 x 15.2 x 3.4 cm, 0.82 kg

    “This is a stunningly original collection of essays-utterly engrossing and compelling. Probing, erudite, elegant, witty, these essays explore the concept of philology at once literally (literally “literally,” that is, to the letter, down to its smallest granules of articulation) and expansively, inviting us to rethink the fundamental categories of existence-language, translation, tradition, genealogy, history, sociability, love, kinship, in short, just about everything. Hamacher’s magnificent Theses could not find a more vibrant afterlife.”-Rebecca Comay, professor of philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Toronto
     
    “Werner Hamacher’s 95 Theses on Philology proposes a new radical understanding of philology distinct from its dusty nineteenth-century conception. The eleven responses to his 95 Theses have provided him with an opportunity to comment extensively and in generous detail on the responses they provoked. Hamacher’s lengthy contribution is not only an extraordinary document of scholarly debate but also a superb piece in which he elaborates on the context of his Theses and on their rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications, thus also providing insight into the workings of his own thought.”-Rodolphe GaschÉ, Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York

    Werner Hamacher’s witty and elliptical 95 Theses on Philology challenges the humanities-and particularly academic philology-that assume language to be a given entity rather than an event. In Give the Word eleven scholars of literature and philosophy (Susan Bernstein, MichÈle Cohen-Halimi, Peter Fenves, Sean Gurd, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Jan Plug, Gerhard Richter, Avital Ronell, Thomas Schestag, Ann Smock, and Vincent van Gerven Oei) take up the challenge presented by Hamacher’s theses. At the close Hamacher responds to them in a spirited text that elaborates on the context of his 95 Theses and its rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications.

    The 95 Theses, included in this volume, makes this collection a rich resource for the study and practice of “radical philology.” Hamacher’s philology interrupts and transforms, parting with tradition precisely in order to remain faithful to its radical but increasingly occluded core.

    The contributors test Hamacher’s break with philology in a variety of ways, attempting a philological practice that does not take language as an object of knowledge, study, or even love. Thus, in responding to Hamacher’s Theses, the authors approach language that, because it can never be an object of any kind, awakens an unfamiliar desire. Taken together these essays problematize philological ontology in a movement toward radical reconceptualizations of labor, action, and historical time.
     

    95 Theses on Philology / 95 Thesen zur Philologie
    Werner Hamacher, translated by Catharine Diehl
    Introduction
    Gerhard Richter and Ann Smock
    Part 1. Balances1. Was heiß
    t Lesen?-What Is Called Reading?
    Gerhard Richter
    2. Language-Such-That-It’
    s-Spoken
    MichÈ
    le Cohen-Halimi, translated by Ann Smock
    3. 48: [this space intentionally left blank]
    Jan Plug
    4. Catch a Wave: Sound, Poetry, Philology
    Sean Gurd
    Part 2. Times
    5. Einmal ist Keinmal: On the 76th of Werner Hamacher’
    s 95 Theses for Philology
    Ann Smock
    6. Rereading tempus fugit
    Thomas Schestag
    7. Language on Pause: Hamacher’
    s Seconds of Celan and Daive
    Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
    Part 3. Categories
    8. The Right Not to Complain: A Philology of Kinship
    Avital “
    Irony”
    Ronell
    9. The Category of Philology
    Peter Fenves
    10. The PhilÍ
    a of Philology
    Susan Bernstein
    11. Defining the Indefinite
    Daniel Heller-Roazen
    Part 4. Responding to Responses
    12. What Remains to Be Said: On Twelve and More Ways of Looking at Philology
    Werner Hamacher, translated by Kristina Mendicino
    Contributors
    Index
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