Passive Voices

On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech

Kristina Mendicino (Professor of German Studies, Brown University)

$83.95 $70.98

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

State University of New York Press
02 August 2023

Literature: history & criticism; Literary theory; Phenomenology & Existentialism; Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism

Series: SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory

Addresses the question of how language affects the subject of speech through readings of confessional, philosophical, and fictional writings.

At least since Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, there has been talk of the pathos of language, of language as ""symbols of the affections in the soul."" The way these affections are registered, however, suggests that they are themselves structured like language. For Aristotle and others, language is suffered before any sense can be voiced. The pathos of language thus becomes a question of how language affects the subject of speech and, in the last analysis, of how language could respond to these questions of language. Passive Voices (On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech) approaches these questions, first, through readings of Augustine's investigations into language and mind and Edmund Husserl's descriptions of passive synthesis. It then traces the further resonance of Augustine's and Husserl's interventions in selected literary experiments by Georges Bataille, Franz Kafka, and Maurice Blanchot that recall Husserl and Augustine while exceeding the restrictive fictions of phenomenological ""science."" In drawing out the echoes that emerge across confessional, philosophical, and fictional writings, this book exposes the ways in which speech occurs in the passive voice and affects any claim to experience.

By: Kristina Mendicino (Professor of German Studies Brown University)
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 426g
ISBN: 9781438491967
ISBN 10: 1438491964
Series: SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory
Pages: 305
Publication Date: 02 August 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kristina Mendico is Associate Professor of German Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Announcements: On Novelty, also published by SUNY Press, and Prophecies of Language: The Confusion of Tongues in German Romanticism.

Reviews for Passive Voices (On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech)

""Well-researched and meticulously argued, Mendicino's book explores how even the most minimal, seemingly immediate experience of the self is marked, traversed by language, putting that very immediacy and everything that follows from it (not least the very notion of identity) into question."" — Jan Plug, author of They Have All Been Healed: Reading Robert Walser ""Passive Voices is a beautiful, if not magisterial, study of the pathos of language in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and several works of modern literature inspired by his philosophy. In exacting readings, Mendicino attends to the words and methods of phenomenology to call into question the concepts of subjectivity and givenness at the heart of this form of inquiry. The book is exhilarating to read in its precision, maturity, chiseled phrasing, and always incisive analysis."" — Rochelle Tobias, author of Pseudo-Memoirs: Life and Its Imitation in Modern Fiction