Two Studies of Friedrich Hцlderlin, Hamacher Werner

Two Studies of Friedrich H lderlin shows how the poet develops and enacts a radical theory of meaning that culminates in a unique, unprecedented, and still groundbreaking concept of revolution that begins with a revolutionary understanding of language. The product of an intense engagement with both Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, the book represents an incisive combination of critical theory and deconstruction, while at the same time identifying the precise place where Heideggers highly influential elucidation of H lderlins late poetry fails to do justice to the astonishing radicality of its theory of meaning. Not only will readers of Werner Hamachers work come away with a new appreciation of H lderlins poetic and political-theoretical achievements and his relation to German Idealism, they will also discover the motivating force behind the late Hamachers own achievements as a literary scholar and political theorist. An introduction by Julia Ng and an afterword by Peter Fenves provide further information about these two studies and the academic and theoretical context in which they were composed.