Branka Arsić - Böcker

In his essay “Compensation,” Emerson makes a surprising claim: “Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house.”Branka Arsić unpacks Emerson’s repeated assertion that our reality and our minds are in constant flux. Arsić’s readings of a broad range of Emerson’s writings—the Early Lectures, Journals and Notebooks, and later lectures—are guided by a central question: what does it really mean to maintain that everything fluctuates, is relational, and so changes its identity?Reading Emerson through this lens, Arsić asks: How is the leaving of one’s own consciousness actually to be performed? What kind of relationship is predicated on the necessity of leaving? What does it mean for our system of values, our ethics and our political allegiances, and even our personal identities to be on the move? The bold new understanding of Emerson that results redefines inherited concepts of the Emersonian individual as all-composed, willful, appropriative, and self-reliant. In its place, Arsić reveals an Emersonian individual whose ideal being is founded in mutability.

Birds were never far from Thoreau’s mind. They wing their way through his writing just as they did through his cabin on Walden Pond, summoned or dismissed at whim by his whistles. Emblematic of life, death, and nature’s endless capacity for renewal, birds offer passage into the loftiest currents of Thoreau’s thought. What Branka Arsić finds there is a theory of vitalism that Thoreau developed in response to his brother’s death. Through grieving, Thoreau came to see life as a generative force into which everything dissolves. Death is not an annulment of life but the means of its transformation and reemergence.Bird Relics traces Thoreau’s evolving thoughts through his investigation of Greek philosophy and the influence of a group of Harvard vitalists who resisted the ideas of the naturalist Louis Agassiz. It takes into account materials often overlooked by critics: his Indian Notebooks and unpublished bird notebooks; his calendars that rewrite how we tell time; his charts of falling leaves, through which he develops a complex theory of decay; and his obsession with vegetal pathology, which inspires a novel understanding of the relationship between disease and health.Arsić’s radical reinterpretation of Thoreau’s life philosophy gives new meaning to some of his more idiosyncratic habits, such as writing obituaries for people he did not know and frequenting estate sales, and raises important questions about the ethics of Thoreau’s practice of appropriating the losses of others as if they were his own.

The Passive Eye is a revolutionary and historically rich account of Berkeley's theory of vision. In this formidable work, the author considers the theory of the embodied subject and its passions in light of a highly dynamic conception of infinity. Arsic shows the profound affinities between Berkeley and Spinoza, and offers a highly textual reading of Berkeley on the concept of an "exhausted subjectivity." The author begins by following the Renaissance universe of vision, particularly the paradoxical elusive nature of mirrors, then shows how this conception of vision was translated into the optical devices and in what way the various ways of deception could be conceived. Reading Berkeley against the backdrop of competing theories, in relation to Leibniz, Spinoza, Newton, Malebranche, Hume, Locke, Molyneux and others, this book gives a meticulous historic reconstruction of Berkeley's theory. This excellent scholarly work presents Berkeley's theory in a new and radical light. The book, presented in three parts, begins by presenting the conceptions of vision prior to Berkeley's intervention. In the second part, the author moves through a careful study of Descartes' theory of vision to arrive at Berkeley. The third part addresses the author's version of Berkeley in which the eye and the image become inseparable due to the collapse of the universe of representation. The problem of vision becomes not that of representation, but of presentation. Through an erudite historic reading of Berkeley's theory and astute comparative assessments, the author uncovers Berkeley's place as a contemporary theoretician, corresponding with such thinkers as Deleuze, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida.

The Passive Eye is a revolutionary and historically rich account of Berkeley's theory of vision. In this formidable work, the author considers the theory of the embodied subject and its passions in light of a highly dynamic conception of infinity. Arsic shows the profound affinities between Berkeley and Spinoza, and offers a highly textual reading of Berkeley on the concept of an "exhausted subjectivity." The author begins by following the Renaissance universe of vision, particularly the paradoxical elusive nature of mirrors, then shows how this conception of vision was translated into the optical devices and in what way the various ways of deception could be conceived. Reading Berkeley against the backdrop of competing theories, in relation to Leibniz, Spinoza, Newton, Malebranche, Hume, Locke, Molyneux and others, this book gives a meticulous historic reconstruction of Berkeley's theory. This excellent scholarly work presents Berkeley's theory in a new and radical light. The book, presented in three parts, begins by presenting the conceptions of vision prior to Berkeley's intervention. In the second part, the author moves through a careful study of Descartes' theory of vision to arrive at Berkeley. The third part addresses the author's version of Berkeley in which the eye and the image become inseparable due to the collapse of the universe of representation. The problem of vision becomes not that of representation, but of presentation. Through an erudite historic reading of Berkeley's theory and astute comparative assessments, the author uncovers Berkeley's place as a contemporary theoretician, corresponding with such thinkers as Deleuze, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida.

This book represents an analysis of one of the most enigmatic characters in American literature. At the same time, it addresses various questions in Melville's writings, such as passivity, identity, the impersonal and neutral, sexuality and the question of marriage, drug addiction, and ethics (especially the problem of testifying and friendship). Reference is made to the whole range of Melville's writings (excluding his poetry), and each chapter situates the question it treats within a larger cultural or theoretical context, such as the legacy of American Puritanism, the appearance of the first American asylums, Melville's treatment of the institutionalization of madness, and the appearance of certain semi-sciences (mesmerism, physiognomy, palmistry, and so on). The book thus covers Melville's thinking concerning American society, his relationship to the law, his treatment of the arts (specifically Turner's paintings), and his responses to the appearance of meteorology, reading such matters as a political and philosophical statement concerning the modern world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most significant figures in nineteenth-century American literature and culture-indeed, this collection argues, in the history of philosophy. The Other Emerson is a thorough reassessment of the philosophical underpinnings, theoretical innovations, and ethical and political implications of the prose writings of one of America's most enduring thinkers.Considering Emerson first and foremost as a daring and original thinker, The Other Emerson focuses on three Emersonian subjects-subjectivity, the political, and the nature of philosophy-and range in topic from Emerson's relationships to slavery and mourning to his place in the development of Romanticism as reread by contemporary systems theory. It is Emerson's appreciation of truth's instability that link him to the European philosophical tradition.Contributors: Eduardo Cadava, Princeton U; Sharon Cameron, Johns Hopkins U; Russell B. Goodman, U of New Mexico; Paul Grimstad, Yale U; Eric Keenaghan, U at Albany, SUNY; Gregg Lambert, Syracuse U; Sandra Laugier, UniversitÉ de Picardie Jules Verne; Donald Pease, Dartmouth College.

Melville’s Philosophies departs from a long tradition of critical assessments of Melville that dismissed his philosophical capacities as ingenious but muddled. Its contributors do not apply philosophy to Melville in order to detect just how much of it he knew or understood. To the contrary, they try to hear the philosophical arguments themselves—often very strange and quite radical—that Melville never stopped articulating and reformulating. What emerges is a Melville who is materialistically oriented in a radical way, a Melville who thinks about life forms not just in the context of contemporary sciences but also ontologically. Melville’s Philosophies recovers a Melville who is a thinker of great caliber, which means obliquely but dramatically reversing the way the critical tradition has characterized his ideas. Finally, as a result of the readings collected here, Melville emerges as a very relevant thinker for contemporary philosophical concerns, such as the materialist turn, climate change, and post-humanism.

Melville’s Philosophies departs from a long tradition of critical assessments of Melville that dismissed his philosophical capacities as ingenious but muddled. Its contributors do not apply philosophy to Melville in order to detect just how much of it he knew or understood. To the contrary, they try to hear the philosophical arguments themselves—often very strange and quite radical—that Melville never stopped articulating and reformulating. What emerges is a Melville who is materialistically oriented in a radical way, a Melville who thinks about life forms not just in the context of contemporary sciences but also ontologically. Melville’s Philosophies recovers a Melville who is a thinker of great caliber, which means obliquely but dramatically reversing the way the critical tradition has characterized his ideas. Finally, as a result of the readings collected here, Melville emerges as a very relevant thinker for contemporary philosophical concerns, such as the materialist turn, climate change, and post-humanism.

Plants are silent, still, or move slowly; we do not have the sense that they accompany us, or even perceive us. But is there something that plants are telling us? Is there something about how they live and connect, how they relate to the world and other plants that can teach us about ecological thinking, about ethics and politics? Grounded in Thoreau’s ecology and in contemporary plant studies, Dispersion: Thoreau and Vegetal Thought offers answers to those questions by pondering such concepts as co-dependence, the continuity of life forms, relationality, cohabitation, porousness, fragility, the openness of beings to incessant modification by other beings and phenomena, patience, waiting, slowness and receptivity.

Plants are silent, still, or move slowly; we do not have the sense that they accompany us, or even perceive us. But is there something that plants are telling us? Is there something about how they live and connect, how they relate to the world and other plants that can teach us about ecological thinking, about ethics and politics? Grounded in Thoreau’s ecology and in contemporary plant studies, Dispersion: Thoreau and Vegetal Thought offers answers to those questions by pondering such concepts as co-dependence, the continuity of life forms, relationality, cohabitation, porousness, fragility, the openness of beings to incessant modification by other beings and phenomena, patience, waiting, slowness and receptivity.

Rethinking the human through Melville's encounters with oceans, ecologies, and non-Western cosmologiesAmbient Life offers a bold reimagining of Herman Melville's writing through the lens of ecology. Renowned literary critic Branka Arsić reframes Melville not just as a novelist but as an environmental thinker – one who reoriented the terms of human identity, perception, and relation. Rather than treating Melville's texts as separate literary objects, Arsić gathers them collectively to stage a philosophical meeting between Western Enlightenment epistemologies and the cosmologies of Polynesian and African traditions.In Ambient Life, Melville's thinking becomes a site where vegetal, animal, and elemental images dissolve the distinction between inner life and outer world, yielding a radically relational form of individuation. Showing how Melville envisioned the human body not as a bounded, rational mind-container but as a porous, sensing organ infused with its surroundings, Arsić presents the mind as ambient rather than internal – a "coral psyche" shaped by atmospheric, aesthetic, and affective entanglements. Drawing from rich historical archives and ethnographic narratives, Arsić's archipelagic method mirrors this fluidity, traveling across oceans and epistemes to map a mode of thought.Pushing the boundaries of scholarly form and content, Ambient Life is a resonant meditation on the unstable boundaries of the self that positions Melville as a witness to the ecological precarity of our time – and an unwitting ancestor of posthumanist thought.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Rethinking the human through Melville's encounters with oceans, ecologies, and non-Western cosmologiesAmbient Life offers a bold reimagining of Herman Melville's writing through the lens of ecology. Renowned literary critic Branka Arsić reframes Melville not just as a novelist but as an environmental thinker – one who reoriented the terms of human identity, perception, and relation. Rather than treating Melville's texts as separate literary objects, Arsić gathers them collectively to stage a philosophical meeting between Western Enlightenment epistemologies and the cosmologies of Polynesian and African traditions.In Ambient Life, Melville's thinking becomes a site where vegetal, animal, and elemental images dissolve the distinction between inner life and outer world, yielding a radically relational form of individuation. Showing how Melville envisioned the human body not as a bounded, rational mind-container but as a porous, sensing organ infused with its surroundings, Arsić presents the mind as ambient rather than internal – a "coral psyche" shaped by atmospheric, aesthetic, and affective entanglements. Drawing from rich historical archives and ethnographic narratives, Arsić's archipelagic method mirrors this fluidity, traveling across oceans and epistemes to map a mode of thought.Pushing the boundaries of scholarly form and content, Ambient Life is a resonant meditation on the unstable boundaries of the self that positions Melville as a witness to the ecological precarity of our time – and an unwitting ancestor of posthumanist thought.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.