America

Avital Ronell

ISBN 10: 1509560270 / ISBN 13: 9781509560271

Editore: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, GB, 2024

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What position does America occupy in the recent history of Western philosophy?  At once the destination for a series of fantasies and the place from which a new relationship to thought originated, America incarnates a dark continent whose strangeness and singularity has driven thinkers outside of their own philosophical comfort zone - often forcing them to show anger, anxiety or desire towards what they considered a challenge or a threat. This book provides a mapping of this complex relationship between America and philosophy through a series of examples drawn from a wide range of authors, from Freud and Heidegger to Adorno, Derrida and many others.  It also examines the way American thinkers themselves have imported, used and abused philosophical views coming from Europe, often transforming them into something other than what they were.  Is then philosophy an anti-American discourse, or America an anti-philosophical country? Or is it, rather, that America provokes philosophy from a place where its own history affirms the impossibilities, paradoxes and contradictions of philosophy itself? At a time when the syntagm "America" has come to crystallize a certain understanding of the world order, interrogating the place that it occupies in our intellectual tradition is also a way to engage critically with the violence attached to it. "America" is a syntagm for violence, but this violence might very well be different than we thought.

Codice articolo LU-9781509560271

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: America
• Editore: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, GB
• Data di pubblicazione: 2024
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1509560270
• ISBN 13: 9781509560271
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: New
• Peso: 680 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

What position does America occupy in the recent history of Western philosophy? At once the destination for a series of fantasies and the place from which a new relationship to thought originated, America incarnates a dark continent whose strangeness and singularity has driven thinkers outside of their own philosophical comfort zone – often forcing them to show anger, anxiety or desire towards what they considered a challenge or a threat.

This book provides a mapping of this complex relationship between America and philosophy through a series of examples drawn from a wide range of authors, from Freud and Heidegger to Adorno, Derrida and many others. It also examines the way American thinkers themselves have imported, used and abused philosophical views coming from Europe, often transforming them into something other than what they were. Is then philosophy an anti-American discourse, or America an anti-philosophical country? Or is it, rather, that America provokes philosophy from a place where its own history affirms the impossibilities, paradoxes and contradictions of philosophy itself?

At a time when the syntagm “America” has come to crystallize a certain understanding of the world order, interrogating the place that it occupies in our intellectual tradition is also a way to engage critically with the violence attached to it. “America” is a syntagm for violence, but this violence might very well be different than we thought.

Informazioni sull?autore

Avital Ronell is University Professor of the Humanities at New York University.