Infancy and History - 9781844675715

How andwhy did experience and knowledge become separated? Is it possible totalk of an infancy of experience, a "dumb" experience? For WalterBenjamin, the "poverty of experience" was a characteristic ofmodernity, originating in the catastrophe of the First World War. ForGiorgio Agamben, the Italian editor of Benjamin's complete works, thedestruction of experience no longer needs catastrophes: daily life inany modern city will suffice.

Agamben'sprofound and radical exploration of language, infancy, and everydaylife traces concepts of experience through Kant, Hegel, Husserl andBenveniste. In doing so he elaborates a theory of infancy that throwsnew light on a number of major themes in contemporary thought: theanthropological opposition between nature and culture; the linguisticopposition between speech and language; the birth of the subject andthe appearance of the unconscious. Agamben goes on to consider time andhistory; the Marxist notion of base and superstructure (via a carefulreading of the famous Adorno-Benjamin correspondence on Baudelaire'sParis); and the difference between rituals and games.

Beautifullywritten, erudite and provocative, these essays will be of greatinterest to students of philosophy, linguistics, anthropology andpolitics.