Presence: Philosophy, History, and Cultural Theory for the Twenty-First Century
Ranjan Ghosh and Ethan Kleinberg
Abstract
The philosophy of “presence” seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes presence a post-linguistic or post-discursive theory that challenges current understan ... More
The philosophy of “presence” seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes presence a post-linguistic or post-discursive theory that challenges current understandings of “meaning” and “interpretation.” This book provides an overview of the concept and surveys both its weaknesses and its possible uses. It explores the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. In three original case studies, presence illuminates the relationships among photography, the past, memory, and the Other. What these diverse but overlapping chapters have in common is a shared commitment to investigate the attempt to reconnect meaning with something “real” and to push the paradigm of presence beyond its current uses.
Keywords:
presence,
meaning,
understanding,
intellectual history,
literary criticism,
philosophy of history,
photography,
memory
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801452208 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801452208.001.0001 |
