Now, Hamacher

Ng, Julia. 2018. Now, Hamacher. Philosophy Today, 61(4), pp. 1013-1022. ISSN 0031-8256 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Death is ironic; as the archi-semiotician and first historian, death fixes object and meaning in a semiotic complex, separates non-sensuous meaning from bare physical existence, but thereby exposes meaning to the capriciousness of interpretation and tradition. The pause, however, conserves that which does not happen in repose, yet does not interrupt history, and lets history emerge in a movement in which all determination of meaning is suspended. This essay is written in memory of Werner Hamacher, whose life in writing shaped language around its distance and delay from the fixity of sound and sense, which, as he argued, are the subliminal conditions to every communication, presentation, and form in general: formative limits that separate and conjoin that which is and the surplus of un-actuality and incompletion that accompanies each instant of our intentional lives.

Keywords: Hamacher, Nancy, Heidegger, Benjamin, Giacometti, language, history, death, in memoriam

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday201818191

Keywords:

Hamacher, Nancy, Heidegger, Benjamin, Giacometti, language, history, death, in memoriam

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

English and Comparative Literature
English and Comparative Literature > Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought

Dates:

DateEvent
10 January 2018Accepted
13 January 2018Published Online

Item ID:

22728

Date Deposited:

10 Jan 2018 10:16

Last Modified:

06 Mar 2019 15:18

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/22728

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