The City in the Distance

Jean-Luc Nancy (Author), Cory Stockwell (Translated by), Jean-Christophe Bailly (Foreword by)

9781531508968

Hardback, published 1 October 2024

160 pages
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.262 kg

FINALIST, 38th ANNUAL FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE
Exploring the ever-changing philosophy of city life with Jean-Luc Nancy
In The City in the Distance, Jean-Luc Nancy embarks on nothing less than a philosophy of the city. Drawing on his widely discussed accounts of sense and of the fraught question of community, Nancy views the city as the site of a disposition that is constantly undergoing metamorphoses.
Far from an abstract account, Nancy attends in the most concrete way possible to the workings of a city not typically taken as paradigmatic, Los Angeles. As Jean-Christophe Bailly suggests in his foreword, Nancy joins Walter Benjamin in thinking the city not from an external vantage point, but on its own terms.

Foreword: The City beyond the Place vii
Jean-Christophe Bailly
Preface: The Uncivil City xi
The City in the Distance 1
First Part (1987): In the Distance . . . Los Angeles 3
Second Part (1999): The City in the Distance 16
Images of the City 36
Traffic/Click 60
The Two Futures of the City 82
An Art of the City 90
Rumoration 111
Moments of the City 114
Acknowledgments 119
Notes 121