Carlo Salzani Livres

How to read Walter Benjamin today? This book argues that the proper way is through an approach which recognizes and respects his own peculiar theorization of the act of reading and the politics of interpretation that this entails. The approach must be figural , that is, focused on images, and driven by the notion of actualization . Figural reading, in the very sui generis Benjaminian way, understands figures as constellations , whereby an image of the past juxtaposes them with an image of the present and is thus actualized. To apply this method to Benjamin’s own work means first to identify some figures. The book singles out the Flâneur, the Detective, the Prostitute and the Ragpicker, and then sets them alongside a contemporary account of the same the Flâneur in Juan Goytisolo’s Landscapes after the Battle (1982), the Detective in Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy (1987), the Prostitute in Dacia Maraini’s Dialogue between a Prostitute and her Client (1973), and the Ragpicker in Mudrooroo’s The Mudrooroo/Müller Project (1993). The book thereby, on the one hand, analyses the politics of reading Benjamin today and, on the other, sets his work against a variety of contemporary aesthetics and politics of interpretation.

This book argues that neoliberalism must be understood as a system of political theology that claims to be founded on individual freedom but demonizes anyone who falls short of its impossible standards.

Adam Kotsko makes the case for the continued relevance of Christian theology for contemporary intellectual life, demonstrating its vibrancy as a creative and constructive pursuit outside the church, rethinking its often rivalrous relationship with philosophy, and tracing the theological roots of modern models of governance and racial oppression.

Argues that the awkwardness of our age is a key to understanding human experience.

Argues that our fascination with cold and ruthless television characters reflects a broken social contract.

Looking at figures including Michel Foucault, St Paul, Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade, Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt, this one-stop reference to Agamben s influences covers 30 thinkers: his primary interlocutors, his secondary references, and the figures who lurk in the background of his arguments without being directly mentioned.

The book shows how Agamben's political concerns emerged and evolved as Agamben responded to contemporary events and new intellectual influences while striving to remain true to his deepest intuitions. Kotsko reveals the trajectory of Agamben's work and shows us what it means to practice philosophy as a living, responsive discipline.

A sequel to Awkwardness and Why We Love Sociopaths, Creepiness explores popular culture to examine the worst character trait of all.

The past decades have seen a growing “philosophical” interest in a number of authors, but strangely enough Saramago’s oeuvre has been left somewhat aside. This volume aims at filling this gap by providing a diverse range of philosophical perspectives and expositions on Saramago’s work. The chapters explore some possible issues arising from his works: from his use of Plato’s allegory of the cave to his re-readings of Biblical stories; from his critique and “reinvention” of philosophy of history to his allegorical exploration of alternative histories; from his humorous approach to our being-towards-death to the revolutionary political charge of his fiction. The essays here confront Saramago’s fiction with concepts, theories, and suggestions belonging to various philosophical traditions and philosophers including Plato, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Lacan, Foucault, Patočka, Derrida, Agamben, and Žižek.

L’Uomo senza qualità di Robert Musil si muove in modo costante tra i due poli di crisi e possibilità. Questo studio analizza tre categorie, assi portanti della modernità, che nel romanzo illustrano questo movimento dialettico: il Soggetto, lo Stato, la Storia. Con feroce ironia Musil mostra il tramonto di queste categorie e ne rivela la decomposizione, ma al tempo stesso cerca una via d’uscita per rifondare l’essenza, la socialità e la temporalità dell’agire umano. Il soggetto cartesiano, «forte», «sovrano» ed autocentrato, si sfalda; e tuttavia il romanzo cerca di scovare le possibilità di una sua rifondazione utopica nello spazio lasciato libero dalla sua dissoluzione. Nell’Impero austro-ungarico, lo Stato come identità sovrana e fondante viene meno; ma la Cacania musiliana, presentando l’esasperazione della crisi delle categorie tradizionali della modernità, è il terreno di sperimentazione più adatto per nuove possibilità. La causalità e la finalità del processo storico si frantumano; ma la tensione utopica che anima la ricerca di Musil lo porta a tentare di «reinventare» la storia su modelli diversi ed eterogenei. L’Utopia è infatti la categoria portante del romanzo e guida tutta la pars construens della filosofia musiliana: Musil non si accontenta di descrivere ed analizzare la crisi ed il tramonto di un mondo, ma propone sempre un suo superamento.