Give the Word ― Responses to Werner Hamacher's 95 Theses on Philology

Werner Hamacher’s witty and elliptical 95 Theses on Philology challenges the humanities—and particularly academic philology—that assume language to be a given entity rather than an event. In Give the Word eleven scholars of literature and philosophy (including Susan Bernstein, Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Peter Fenves, Sean Gurd, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Jan Plug, Gerhard Richter, Avital Ronell, Thomas Schestag, Ann Smock, and Vincent van Gerven Oei) take up the challenge presented by Hamacher’s theses. At the close Hamacher responds to them in a spirited text that elaborates on the context of his 95 Theses and its rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications.

The 95 Theses, included in this volume, makes this collection a rich resource for the study and practice of “radical philology.” Hamacher’s philology interrupts and transforms, parting with tradition precisely in order to remain faithful to its radical but increasingly occluded core.

The contributors test Hamacher’s break with philology in a variety of ways, attempting a philological practice that does not take language as an object of knowledge, study, or even love. Thus, in responding to Hamacher’s Theses, the authors approach language that, because it can never be an object of any kind, awakens an unfamiliar desire. Taken together these essays problematize philological ontology in a movement toward radical reconceptualizations of labor, action, and historical time.

Gerhard Richter?is a professor of German studies and comparative literature at Brown University.?He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Inheriting Walter Benjamin and Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics. Ann Smock is a professor emerita of French at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of two books, including What Is There to Say??(Nebraska, 2003), and?has translated several books. An influential theorist, philosopher, and literary critic, Werner Hamacher (1948–2017) was a professor at the University of Frankfurt and founder of its Institute of General and Comparative Literary Studies.
?