Utopia of Understanding: Between Babel and Auschwitz (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

A hermeneutics of language after Auschwitz. Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language—even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida’s confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come. Donatella Ester Di Cesare is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and of Jewish Philosophy at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano. She is the author of many books, including Grammatica dei tempi messianici; Gadamer; and Ermeneutica della finitezza. Niall Keane is Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College and the translator of Mauro Carbones An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas, also published by SUNY Press Utopia of Understanding: Between Babel and Auschwitz 1 Utopia of Understanding: Between Babel and Auschwitz 6 Contents 10 Preface 14 Chapter One: Being and language in Philosophical Hermeneutics 18 1. Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn 18 2. Which “Turn”? 19 3. From Heidegger to Gadamer: Language as Dwelling, Refuge, Shelter, Exile 20 4. “The History of a Comma” 21 5. Gadamer’s Self-Interpretation 23 6. Understanding as Middle Term and Mediation 23 7. Language and Linguisticality 24 8. Searching for the “Right” Word 25 9. “Being” Twice: The Speculative Passage from Being to Being-Language 26 10. The Universal “There” of the Word 27 11. Self-Overcoming: The Movement of Hermeneutics 28 12. The Understanding of Being: Hermeneutics Facing Ontology 29 13. The A-Metaphysical Dimension of Philosophical Hermeneutics 29 14. A Philosophy of Infinite Finitude 30 Chapter Two: The Hermeneutic Understanding of Language 34 1. Heidegger and the Derivativeness of Assertion 34 2. Aristotle’s Lesson 35 3. Hermeneutics Between Semantic Lógos and Apophantic Lógos 37 4. The Logic of Linguistic Praxis 37 5. As if “assertions fall from the sky . . .” The Analytic Artifice 38 6. Assertion , Method, and the Power of Technology 39 7. The Tribunal of Assertions 40 8. Hermeneía: From the Said to the Unsaid 41 9. Speculum: The Speculative Movement of Language 42 10. Beyond Hegel: The Dialectic of Finite and Infinite 44 11. The Truth of the Word 45 12. The Hermeneutic Listening to Language 46 Chapter Three: Translation and Redemption 52 1. “. . . one shall no longer understand the lip of the other.” Babel 52 2. Languages in the Diaspora 57 3. “Love without Demands”: Translation in the Age of Romanticism 58 4. From the Original to the Originary: On Heidegger 66 5. Giving Voice to the Foreign Voice: The Translation of the Torah 79 6. The Dialogue of Languages: On Benjamin 87 7. “Pure Language” and Messianic Silence 97 Chapter Four: Exiled in Language 112 1. “Exile” in the Jewish Tradition 112 2. “How Much Home Does One Man Need?” 113 3. Exile from the Land, Exile from the Language 115 4. On the Mother Tongue 117 5. In the Firmament of Rosenzweig:The Holy Language and the Language of the Guest 120 6. If German is the Language of the Origin 123 7. “What Remains? The Mother Tongue Remains”: On Hannah Arendt 125 8. My Language Which is of the Other: Derrida and Monolingualism 128 9. Language Forbids Ownership 131 10. The Exile of Language 132 Chapter Five: The Dialogue of Poetry 142 1. Paul Celan as a Witness to Hermeneutic Dialogue 142 2. The Everyday Word and the Poetic Word 143 3. Poetizing and Interpreting 144 4. “Your irrefutable witness” 145 5. Your I and My Thou: The Universality of Poetry 146 6. The Flow of Dialogue and the Crystal of Poetry 147 7. The “Soul’s Refrain” 148 Chapter Six: Understanding: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction 154 1. Paris 1981: An “Improbable Debate ” 154 2. Hermeneutics and Deconstruction: Which Difference? 156 3. Derrida and Hermeneutics: Plaidoyer for Interruption 158 4. Gadamer and Deconstruction: “. . . at the begining of a dialogue” 161 5. On the Language of Metaphysics and on Language in General 163 6. The Being-for-the-Other of Language 166 7. Wanting to Say and Wanting to Understand 167 8. “Comprendre c'est égaler"? On Nietzsche 171 9. Understanding is Understanding Differently 174 10. On Accord and Discord 178 11. Heidelberg 2003: Starting from that Interruption 181 12. “The world is gone . . .”: Dialogue after death 181 13. Thinking, Carrying, Translating 183 14. The Blessing of the Hand, the Blessing of the Poem 185 15. Stars and Constellations 187 Chapter Seven: Utopia of Understanding 202 1. U-topia, Topia, Utopia: On Gustav Landauer 202 2. Celan, Poetry, and the “Revolution of the Breath” 205 3. Breaking the Silence:Voice and the Absolute Vocative 206 4. January 20: The Date and the Circumcised Word 208 5. Speaking Ever Yet 210 6. The Language-Grille 212 7. Straitening, Anguish, Anxiety: On the Limit-Situation 215 8. The Other of the Limit, the Limit of the Other: The You is the Lever of the I 216 9. Understanding to live, Living to Understand : Auschwitz 218 10. Átopos: The Stranger Out of Place 225 11. The Tent of Encounter 229 12. “. . . The Language That Wandered With Us” 233 13. The Time of the Promise 235 14. North of the Future 238 15. The Word of Conspiracy 244 Index 258 "Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language - even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida’s confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come."--pub. desc