Uncontainable Legacies
Theses on Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Inheritance
Published on 22. September 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-4744-8781-8 (ISBN)
Description
In a series of evocatively titled theses, including 'Wrinkles', 'Inheriting a Feeling', 'Weight of the World' and 'Making Treasures Speak', Gerhard Richter engages the quintessentially human dilemma of how to receive an intellectual, cultural or political inheritance. In dialogue with philosophers including Heraclitus, Arendt and Derrida; writers such as Montaigne, Hoelderlin, Kafka and Knausgaard; artists such as Michelangelo, Picasso, Anselm Kiefer and Art Spiegelman; filmmakers such as Jean-Marie Straub; scholars and scientists Freud and Einstein; and pop-cultural phenomena the rock band The Who and the Broadway play The Inheritance, Richter contemplates the problem of interpreting an inheritance that resists full transparency. Richter argues that inheriting is not the same as yearning for a former presence or nostalgically striving to preserve an identity. At once philosophical and poetic, his aphoristic theses illuminate how the constantly shifting nature of our relationship to what we inherit from others makes us who we are.
Reviews / Votes
'Legacy', 'inheritance', 'heritage': inspiring words. Yet Greek tragedy showed that inheritance is often misunderstood, and that, once understood, it destroys the inheritors. One may inherit contaminants that cannot be contained. Richter's Uncontainable Legacies meditates relentlessly on the the ways legacies, in our politics, culture and personal lives, spur us to think. -- David Farrell Krell, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, DePaul University Uncontainable Legacies is not simply an academic and learned book on a topic of general interest. Rather the masterful elaborations on what inheritance consists of concern first of all the humanities, and in particular the humanities today, and in that sense, this book is a highly significant political intervention. -- Rodolphe Gasche, University at Buffalo, State University of New YorkMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 189 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
245 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-8781-8 (9781474487818)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2021
Edinburgh University Press
€25.99
Available for download
Person
Gerhard Richter is University Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University. In 2020, Brown honoured Richter with the title 'University Professor', which recognizes distinguished senior faculty whose accomplishments and influence transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Richter was educated in Germany and the United States, earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1996. He publishes in English and German and his work has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. Richter has published eight single-authored books, seven edited books, and over 70 journal articles and book chapters across a wide range of European critical thought.His books include Thinking with Adorno: The Uncoercive Gaze (Fordham University Press, 2019); AEsthetische Eigenzeiten und die Zeit des Bewahrens. Heidegger mit Arendt, Derrida und Kafka (Wehrhahn, 2019); Inheriting Walter Benjamin (Bloomsbury, 2016); Verwaiste Hinterlassenschaften. Formen gespentischen Erbens (Matthes & Seitz, 2016) and Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics (Columbia University Press, 2011).
Content
The One Who Inherits, Interprets
Thetic Inheritance
Ideal Reader
No Conservatism
Triple Temporalities
Generations
The Difficulty of Using Freely What Is One's Own
Elusive Inheritance
Inheriting a Feeling
Who Is the Human Being?
Homo Heriditans
Ruptured Temporalities
Language
Other Languages, Languages of the Other
We Are What We Inherit
Saying
Always Already
Ghostly Traces
Undecidability
Question Marks
Endings, Beginnings
Ends of Time
Life and Death
Leave-Taking
Orphaned Remains
Masterless Legacy
Unwanted Inheritance
The Original Unwanted Inheritance
Unwanted Inheritance, Redux
Refusals
Hegelian Labours of Inheritance
Unreadabilities of Inheritance
Wrinkles
Singularities of Misinheriting
Suspended Differentiations
The Past is not Past
Reinvention I
Reinvention II
Paleonomies
Imposition
Being Born Posthumously
Grave Cares
Un heritier
Inheriting Myths
Backward and Forward
Relating to an Inheritance without Imitating
Deniers
Something Is Taking Its Course
Coming After
Inheriting Learning
Institutions
Nonexplicative Bequeathing
Explanations Come to an End Somewhere
Time after Time
Inheriting Binaries
Refusals Redux
Recognising the Self
Mitwelt
Refusals of Fashion
Refusals, One More Time
Keeping Watch
Palliatives
Little Greeks
Inheriting Inheritance
Anxieties of Inheritance
Living On
There May Be No Heir
Chiselling
Arresting Motion
Elective Affinities
Letting Sentences Run Risks
The Strength That No Certainty Can Match
Fatherless Inheritance
Speaking With the Dead
Two Sides of the Coin
The Past Conditional
Humic Inheritance
Selections
Who Inherits?
Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants
Translation I
Translation II
Haunting Inheritance
To Read What Was Never Written
Inheriting a Future
Archival Traces
Invisibilities
Refunctionalising I
Refunctionalising II
Forgetting one's Language, Making History
Inheriting a Contested Provenance
Reading Inheriting
Understanding Tropes
Je suis, I am-Do You Follow?
Parusia
Possibilities of Prosopopeia
What's the Difference, Kafka?
Inheritance Would Be a Good Idea
Quotation
Today
Teacups
Debts
No Debts?
Parental Riddles
Mothers of the Heir
Children of the Heir
Fathers (Worrisome Bequeathing)
Inherited Jouissance
Self-Inheritance of Time I
Self-Inheritance of Time II
Applied Self-Inheritance
Self-Inheritance Tripped Up
Perverse Inheritance
Unreasonable Reason
Faulty Origins
Heirs of the Ages
Inheriting the Sound of Silence I
Inheriting the Sound of Silence II
Fibers
Inheriting a Question Mark
Not for Cowards
Weight of the World
Making Treasures Speak
Loss
Generalised Capitalism
Nostalgia for the Future
Rich Inner Life
Doxa
Side-Taking
Detours and Wooden Paths
Stone
Not Done
Proof
Creating Concepts
Those Days
Untimeliness
Heir to Come
Different Heir-Selves
Possible Failures
Partial Inheritance
No Repetition
How It Goes
Not for Sale
Creative Solitudes
End Times
Inheriting Extinction
Reference Matter
Thetic Inheritance
Ideal Reader
No Conservatism
Triple Temporalities
Generations
The Difficulty of Using Freely What Is One's Own
Elusive Inheritance
Inheriting a Feeling
Who Is the Human Being?
Homo Heriditans
Ruptured Temporalities
Language
Other Languages, Languages of the Other
We Are What We Inherit
Saying
Always Already
Ghostly Traces
Undecidability
Question Marks
Endings, Beginnings
Ends of Time
Life and Death
Leave-Taking
Orphaned Remains
Masterless Legacy
Unwanted Inheritance
The Original Unwanted Inheritance
Unwanted Inheritance, Redux
Refusals
Hegelian Labours of Inheritance
Unreadabilities of Inheritance
Wrinkles
Singularities of Misinheriting
Suspended Differentiations
The Past is not Past
Reinvention I
Reinvention II
Paleonomies
Imposition
Being Born Posthumously
Grave Cares
Un heritier
Inheriting Myths
Backward and Forward
Relating to an Inheritance without Imitating
Deniers
Something Is Taking Its Course
Coming After
Inheriting Learning
Institutions
Nonexplicative Bequeathing
Explanations Come to an End Somewhere
Time after Time
Inheriting Binaries
Refusals Redux
Recognising the Self
Mitwelt
Refusals of Fashion
Refusals, One More Time
Keeping Watch
Palliatives
Little Greeks
Inheriting Inheritance
Anxieties of Inheritance
Living On
There May Be No Heir
Chiselling
Arresting Motion
Elective Affinities
Letting Sentences Run Risks
The Strength That No Certainty Can Match
Fatherless Inheritance
Speaking With the Dead
Two Sides of the Coin
The Past Conditional
Humic Inheritance
Selections
Who Inherits?
Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants
Translation I
Translation II
Haunting Inheritance
To Read What Was Never Written
Inheriting a Future
Archival Traces
Invisibilities
Refunctionalising I
Refunctionalising II
Forgetting one's Language, Making History
Inheriting a Contested Provenance
Reading Inheriting
Understanding Tropes
Je suis, I am-Do You Follow?
Parusia
Possibilities of Prosopopeia
What's the Difference, Kafka?
Inheritance Would Be a Good Idea
Quotation
Today
Teacups
Debts
No Debts?
Parental Riddles
Mothers of the Heir
Children of the Heir
Fathers (Worrisome Bequeathing)
Inherited Jouissance
Self-Inheritance of Time I
Self-Inheritance of Time II
Applied Self-Inheritance
Self-Inheritance Tripped Up
Perverse Inheritance
Unreasonable Reason
Faulty Origins
Heirs of the Ages
Inheriting the Sound of Silence I
Inheriting the Sound of Silence II
Fibers
Inheriting a Question Mark
Not for Cowards
Weight of the World
Making Treasures Speak
Loss
Generalised Capitalism
Nostalgia for the Future
Rich Inner Life
Doxa
Side-Taking
Detours and Wooden Paths
Stone
Not Done
Proof
Creating Concepts
Those Days
Untimeliness
Heir to Come
Different Heir-Selves
Possible Failures
Partial Inheritance
No Repetition
How It Goes
Not for Sale
Creative Solitudes
End Times
Inheriting Extinction
Reference Matter