Forms of Life : Aesthetics and Biopolitics in German Culture (Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought)

Gailus, Andreas

Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library（2020/09発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 277 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781501749810
• DDC分類 830.9

Full Description

In Forms of Life, Andreas Gailus argues that the neglect of aesthetics in most contemporary theories of biopolitics has resulted in an overly restricted conception of life. He insists we need a more flexible notion of life: one attuned to the interplay and conflict between its many dimensions and forms. Forms of Life develops such a notion through the meticulous study of works by Kant, Goethe, Kleist, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Benn, Musil, and others.

Gailus shows that the modern conception of "life" as a generative, organizing force internal to living beings emerged in the last decades of the eighteenth century in biological thought. At the core of this vitalist strand of thought, Gailus maintains, lies a persistent emphasis on the dynamics of formation and deformation, and thus on an intrinsically aesthetic dimension of life.

Forms of Life brings this older discourse into critical conversation with contemporary discussions of biopolitics and vitalism, while also developing a rich conception of life that highlights, rather than suppresses, its protean character. Gailus demonstrates that life unfolds in the open-ended interweaving of the myriad forms and modalities of biological, ethical, political, psychical, aesthetic, and biographical systems.

Contents

Introduction
Part I: Life as Formation
1. The Life of Cognition and the Cognition of Life (Kant)
2. Metamorphoses of Form (Goethe)
Part II: The Conflict of Forms
3. Enter the Hybrid (Kleist)
4. Life as Will (Nietzsche)
Part III: Deformation
5. Brains (Benn)
6. The Infinite Specificity of Life (Musil)
Epilogue