Since Nietzsche's appropriation of the term in his later work, the concept of nihilism has played a decisive role in the thinking of both modernity and postmodernity. This book charts the deployment of that concept by some of the most influential philosophers and literary theorists of the modern period, including Heidegger, Adorno, Blanchot, Derrida, Agamben, Vattimo, and Badiou. Focusing in particular on the ways in which each of these deployments involves both a countering redetermination of nihilism and a privileging of a certain concept of the literary for what is taken to be its power of resistance to it, Weller proposes neither a critique nor a revalorization of nihilism; rather, he explores through an historical, conceptual, and philological analysis the various ways in which nihilism, as what Nietzsche terms the 'uncanniest of all guests', returns to haunt the thought of those who would counter it.
Preface
Introduction: What's in a Name?
Absolute Devaluation: Friedrich Nietzsche
Homelessness: Martin Heidegger
Fatal Positivities: Theodor Adorno
The Naive Calculation of the Negative: Maurice Blanchot
Bad Violence: Jacques Derrida
The Fracture: Giorgio Agamben
Distortions, or Nihilism Against Itself: Gianni Vattimo
The Denial of (Greek) Thought: Alain Badiou
Conclusion: Nihilism at the Door
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SHANE WELLER is Reader in Comparative Literature in the School of European Culture and Languages at the University of Kent, UK. His publications include A Taste for the Negative: Beckett and Nihilism (2005), Beckett, Literature and the Ethics of Alterity (2006) and The Flesh in the Text (2007, co-edited with Thomas Baldwin and James Fowler).
Description
Since Nietzsche's appropriation of the term in his later work, the concept of nihilism has played a decisive role in the thinking of both modernity and postmodernity. This book charts the deployment of that concept by some of the most influential philosophers and literary theorists of the modern period, including Heidegger, Adorno, Blanchot, Derrida, Agamben, Vattimo, and Badiou. Focusing in particular on the ways in which each of these deployments involves both a countering redetermination of nihilism and a privileging of a certain concept of the literary for what is taken to be its power of resistance to it, Weller proposes neither a critique nor a revalorization of nihilism; rather, he explores through an historical, conceptual, and philological analysis the various ways in which nihilism, as what Nietzsche terms the 'uncanniest of all guests', returns to haunt the thought of those who would counter it.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: What's in a Name?
Absolute Devaluation: Friedrich Nietzsche
Homelessness: Martin Heidegger
Fatal Positivities: Theodor Adorno
The Naive Calculation of the Negative: Maurice Blanchot
Bad Violence: Jacques Derrida
The Fracture: Giorgio Agamben
Distortions, or Nihilism Against Itself: Gianni Vattimo
The Denial of (Greek) Thought: Alain Badiou
Conclusion: Nihilism at the Door
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Authors
SHANE WELLER is Reader in Comparative Literature in the School of European Culture and Languages at the University of Kent, UK. His publications include A Taste for the Negative: Beckett and Nihilism (2005), Beckett, Literature and the Ethics of Alterity (2006) and The Flesh in the Text (2007, co-edited with Thomas Baldwin and James Fowler).
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