Oxymoron

REVIEWS Oxymoron Paolo Virno, When the Word Becomes Flesh: Language and Human Nature, trans. Giuseppina Mecchia, Semiotext(e), South Pasadena CA, 2015. 264 pp., £12.95 pb., 978 1 58435 094 1. In Paolo Virno’s previous book, A Grammar of Multitude, grammar – in other words, the philosophy of language – played second fiddle to the multitude […]

Introduction

Dossier: Romantic Transdisciplinarity 1

Dossier ROMANTIC TRANSDISCIPLINARIT Y 1 Introduction Of all the genealogical sources of contemporary critical theory, in both its Germanand French-inspired variants, early German Romanticism remains the most potent, yet it is also the least explicated in relation to current theoretical trends.* The sources of modern criticism in Jena Romanticism are widely acknowledged, yet when theory […]

Bildung and strategy: The fate of the ‘beautiful sciences’

Dossier: Romantic Transdisciplinarity 1

Bildung and strategy The fate of the ‘beautiful sciences’ Howard caygill Kant’s 1798 Conflict of the Faculties makes an explicit case for viewing philosophy as the romantic transdiscipline. The ‘lower faculty’ he explained there is less tied to the professional restrictions on research and teaching characteristic of the ‘higher faculties’ of law, medicine and theology […]

196 Reviews

REVIEWS Oxymoron Paolo Virno, When the Word Becomes Flesh: Language and Human Nature, trans. Giuseppina Mecchia, Semiotext(e), South Pasadena CA, 2015. 264 pp., £12.95 pb., 978 1 58435 094 1. In Paolo Virno’s previous book, A Grammar of Multitude, grammar – in other words, the philosophy of language – played second fiddle to the multitude […]

Benjamin in Ramallah: Who Owns Walter Benjamin?

On the Place and Non-Place of Radical Thought, Ramallah, 5–11 December 2015The aim of this international conference, which unfolded over five days in and around Ramallah, was to reflect on the critical productivity of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy in present-day Palestine. Gathering over a hundred participants, including a strong Palestinian contingent of artists, scholars and students, ‘Benjamin in Palestine’ […]