
Self-Portrait in the Studio
Giorgio Agamben(Author)
Seagull Books London Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 1. November 2024
Book
Hardback
220 pages
978-1-80309-465-6 (ISBN)
Description
A rare autobiographical glimpse into the life and influences of one of Europe's greatest living philosophers.
This book's title, Self-Portrait in the Studio-a familiar iconographic subject in the history of painting-is intended to be taken literally: the book is a self-portrait, but one that comes into view for the reader only by way of patient scrutiny of the images, photographs, objects, and paintings present in the studios where the writer has worked and still works. That is to say, Giorgio Agamben's wager is to speak of himself solely and uniquely by speaking of others: the poets, philosophers, painters, musicians, friends, passions-in short, the meetings and encounters that have shaped his life, thought, and writing, from Martin Heidegger to Elsa Morante, from Herman Melville to Walter Benjamin, from Giorgio Caproni to Giovanni Urbani. For this reason, images are an integral part of the book, images that-like those in a rebus that together form another, larger image-ultimately combine with the written text in one of the most unusual self-portraits that any writer has left of himself: not an autobiography, but a faithful and timeless auto-heterography.
This book's title, Self-Portrait in the Studio-a familiar iconographic subject in the history of painting-is intended to be taken literally: the book is a self-portrait, but one that comes into view for the reader only by way of patient scrutiny of the images, photographs, objects, and paintings present in the studios where the writer has worked and still works. That is to say, Giorgio Agamben's wager is to speak of himself solely and uniquely by speaking of others: the poets, philosophers, painters, musicians, friends, passions-in short, the meetings and encounters that have shaped his life, thought, and writing, from Martin Heidegger to Elsa Morante, from Herman Melville to Walter Benjamin, from Giorgio Caproni to Giovanni Urbani. For this reason, images are an integral part of the book, images that-like those in a rebus that together form another, larger image-ultimately combine with the written text in one of the most unusual self-portraits that any writer has left of himself: not an autobiography, but a faithful and timeless auto-heterography.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Greenford
United Kingdom
Illustrations
98 color plates
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
366 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80309-465-6 (9781803094656)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Giorgio Agamben is one of Italy's foremost contemporary thinkers. Seagull Books's Italian List includes several of Agamben's recent works. Kevin Attell teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and is the author of Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction.