Simon Morgan Wortham – författare

Analyses how modern conceptions of politics, ethics, and critical thought may be re-evaluated through the question of pain.Through a series of rigorous encounters with key critical figures, this monograph argues that modern thought is, in a double sense, the thought of pain. The book investigates the idea that modern European philosophy after Kant offers less the conceptual equipment to tackle pain in explanatory terms, than an experience of thought that participates in the forms of pain and suffering about which it speaks. Perhaps surprisingly, the question of pain establishes a ground from which to examine key debates in twentieth-century European philosophy, most recently between forms of post-structuralist and ethical thinking imagined to be in crisis and the resurgence of discourses of political emancipation arising from traditions of thought associated with Marxism.  Key features:• Offers a systematic account of the modern European tradition’s relationship to the question of pain and suffering• Suggests new readings of ‘ethics’ and ‘evil’• Evaluates the politics of contemporary critical theory• Sets new agendas for reading post-Kantian philosophy

This book provides a definitive account of Jacques Derrida's involvement in debates about the university. Derrida was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (GREPH), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975. He also helped to convene the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. Furthermore, he was closely associated with the founding of the International College of Philosophy in Paris, and his connection with the International Parliament of Writers during the 1990s also illustrates his continuing interest in the possibility of launching an array of literary and philosophical projects while experimenting with new kinds of institutions in which they might take their specific shape and direction. Derrida argues that the place of philosophy in the university should be explored as both a historical question and a philosophical problem in its own right. He argues that philosophy simultaneously belongs and does not belong to the university. In its founding role, it must come from "outside" the institution in which, nevertheless, it comes to define itself. The author asks whether this irresolvable tension between "belonging" and "not belonging" might not also form the basis of Derrida's political thinking and activism where wider issues of contemporary significance are concerned. Key questions today concerning citizenship, rights, the nation-state and Europe, asylum, immigration, terror, and the "return" of religion all involve assumptions and ideas about "belonging"; and they entail constitutional, legal, institutional and material constraints that take shape precisely on the basis of such ideas. This project will therefore open up a key question: Can deconstruction's insight into the paradoxical institutional standing of philosophy form the basis of a meaningful political response by "theory" to a number of contemporary international issues?

This book provides a definitive account of Jacques Derrida's involvement in debates about the university. Derrida was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (GREPH), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975. He also helped to convene the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. Furthermore, he was closely associated with the founding of the International College of Philosophy in Paris, and his connection with the International Parliament of Writers during the 1990s also illustrates his continuing interest in the possibility of launching an array of literary and philosophical projects while experimenting with new kinds of institutions in which they might take their specific shape and direction. Derrida argues that the place of philosophy in the university should be explored as both a historical question and a philosophical problem in its own right. He argues that philosophy simultaneously belongs and does not belong to the university. In its founding role, it must come from "outside" the institution in which, nevertheless, it comes to define itself. The author asks whether this irresolvable tension between "belonging" and "not belonging" might not also form the basis of Derrida's political thinking and activism where wider issues of contemporary significance are concerned. Key questions today concerning citizenship, rights, the nation-state and Europe, asylum, immigration, terror, and the "return" of religion all involve assumptions and ideas about "belonging"; and they entail constitutional, legal, institutional and material constraints that take shape precisely on the basis of such ideas. This project will therefore open up a key question: Can deconstruction's insight into the paradoxical institutional standing of philosophy form the basis of a meaningful political response by "theory" to a number of contemporary international issues?

The work of Samuel Weber has greatly influenced writers and thinkers across the arts and humanities: including literary, critical, and cultural theory; media, communication, theater, and cultural studies; new media and technology; psychoanalysis; and philosophy. His remarkable and inaugural texts have been especially important to the deconstructive tradition, given his early recognition of the importance of the writings of Jacques Derrida. Taught by Theodor W. Adorno and Peter Szondi, he is equally at home in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, in the German literary tradition, or in psychoanalysis. Weber played an important role in the process of translation, publication, and interpretation that brought "theory" to prominence in the United States. His work continues to reactivate and transform the legacy bequeathed to us by figures such as Kant, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, de Man, and Derrida, not least by exposing the field of philosophy to contemporary questions in the arenas of media, technology, politics, and culture.This volume brings together a number of eminent scholars seeking to assess the intellectual impact of Weber's large body of writings. It also contains two new and previously unpublished essays by Weber himself: "'God Bless America!'" and "'Going Along for the Ride: Violence and Gesture-Agamben Reading Benjamin Reading Kafka Reading Cervantes.'"

The work of Samuel Weber has greatly influenced writers and thinkers across the arts and humanities: including literary, critical, and cultural theory; media, communication, theater, and cultural studies; new media and technology; psychoanalysis; and philosophy. His remarkable and inaugural texts have been especially important to the deconstructive tradition, given his early recognition of the importance of the writings of Jacques Derrida. Taught by Theodor W. Adorno and Peter Szondi, he is equally at home in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, in the German literary tradition, or in psychoanalysis. Weber played an important role in the process of translation, publication, and interpretation that brought "theory" to prominence in the United States. His work continues to reactivate and transform the legacy bequeathed to us by figures such as Kant, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, de Man, and Derrida, not least by exposing the field of philosophy to contemporary questions in the arenas of media, technology, politics, and culture.This volume brings together a number of eminent scholars seeking to assess the intellectual impact of Weber's large body of writings. It also contains two new and previously unpublished essays by Weber himself: "'God Bless America!'" and "'Going Along for the Ride: Violence and Gesture-Agamben Reading Benjamin Reading Kafka Reading Cervantes.'"

Title first published in 2003. 'Weber is probably the only person in his generation who is equally at home in and directly informed about contemporary literary theory and its antecedents in Germany, France, and the US. His theoretical interest in psychoanalysis serves as a viewpoint from which a powerful combination of philosophical, linguistic, and political concerns are brought together in an uncommonly productive dialectical interplay' Paul de Man This book presents the first introductory text examining the work of the contemporary thinker, Samuel Weber. Accessible, compelling and challenging, Weber's writing offers a rewarding investigation into the connections between literary and cultural studies, media and technology, and philosophy and aesthetics, in the context of significant intellectual debates and developments linking Europe and North America. The critical practice of Weber's various texts is explored in detail, along with his studies in philosophy, aesthetics, deconstruction, media, technology, psychoanalysis and theatre.

Title first published in 2003. 'Weber is probably the only person in his generation who is equally at home in and directly informed about contemporary literary theory and its antecedents in Germany, France, and the US. His theoretical interest in psychoanalysis serves as a viewpoint from which a powerful combination of philosophical, linguistic, and political concerns are brought together in an uncommonly productive dialectical interplay' Paul de Man This book presents the first introductory text examining the work of the contemporary thinker, Samuel Weber. Accessible, compelling and challenging, Weber's writing offers a rewarding investigation into the connections between literary and cultural studies, media and technology, and philosophy and aesthetics, in the context of significant intellectual debates and developments linking Europe and North America. The critical practice of Weber's various texts is explored in detail, along with his studies in philosophy, aesthetics, deconstruction, media, technology, psychoanalysis and theatre.

One of Derrida’s most complex, intriguing and challenging texts, Glas is a work of resounding importance for literature, for philosophy, for literature, and for the relationship between the two. This collection of essays, featuring leading scholars in the field, seeks to trace its resonance four decades after its publication. A number of interconnected problems and themes will be examined, including Derrida’s deconstruction of the Hegelian interpretation of Antigone, the philosophy and politics of familial and civil life, questions of sexual difference and dissidence, the question of the signature, the complex role played by figuration and language, and the continuing relevance of Glas today. While some of the essays undertake rigorous close readings of the text, at the same time as tracing the limits of such reading as they are indeed anticipated by Glas itself, others take this work as the occasion to explore its reverberations in other writings and in a host of topics and problems germane not only to literary and philosophical studies, but to cultural and political worlds far beyond the confines of academia.