undefinedPoetry does not impose, it exposes itself,undefined wrote Paul Celan. Werner Hamacherundefineds investigations into crucial texts of philosophical and literary modernity show that Celanundefineds apothegm is also valid for the structure of understanding and for language in general. In Premises Hamacher demonstrates that the promise of a subject position is not only unavoidableundefinedand thus operates as a structural imperativeundefinedbut is also unattainable and therefore by necessity open to possibilities other than that defined as undefinedposition,undefined to redefinitions and unexpected transformations of the merely thetical act.
Proceeding along the lines of both philosophical argument and critical reading, Hamacher presents the fullest account of the vast disruption in the theories and ethics of positional and propositional actsundefineda disruption first exposed by Kantundefineds analysis of the minimal requirements for linguistic and practical action. Focusing on the double trait of every premiseundefinedthat it is promised but never attainedundefinedHamacher analyzes nine decisive themes, topics, and texts of modernity: the hermeneutic circle in Schleiermacher and Heidegger, the structure of ethical commands in Kant, Nietzscheundefineds genealogy of moral terms and his exploration of the aporias of singularity, the irony of reading in de Man, the parabasis of positing acts in Fichte and Schlegel, Kleistundefineds disruption of narrative representation, the gesture of naming in Benjamin and Kafka, and the incisive caesura that Paul Celan inserts into temporal and linguistic reversals. There is no book that so fully brings the issues of both critical philosophy and critical literature into reach.
Reviews
undefinedWerner Hamacherundefineds Premises is the heir and successor to the most important theoretical and critical work done in American departments of comparative literature from the 1960s through the 1980s. Yet, Premises is no more a work of literary scholarship than one of philosophical submission to philosophy. With the gesture that is genuinely called post-structural, which is the suspicion and suspension of every code, the bookundefineds act of freedom is freedom to read and write language tout court.undefined
undefinedTimothy Bahti,
University of Michigan
undefinedHamacherundefineds project can be described as the retracing of the epistemological ground upon which the modern conception of the literary was erected. It is quite clear to me that there is nothing presently available to rival this book.undefined
undefinedWlad Godzich,
University of Geneva
