Henry Staten adopts an innovative psychodialectical approach to Nietzsche, drawn from Nietzsche's own doctrine that philosophical thought is governed by drives and instincts that-for Nietzsche as for Freud-are fundamentally sexual in nature. Staten...
The innovative format of "dialogical poetics" challenges traditional poetry criticism by emphasizing the ongoing negotiation between readers rather than presenting fixed interpretations. This approach reveals that readings of poems are dynamic and collaborative, highlighting the interactions and discussions that shape our understanding of poetry.
Examines Aristotle, Kant, and especially Husserl to bring to light Derrida's development of the classical philosophical concepts of form (eidos), verbal formula (logos), the object-in-general, and time. This book also examines the later work of Wittgenstein in detail and Wittgenstein's 'zigzag' writing in the Philosophical Investigations.
Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century, art was conceived as techne--the skill and know-how by which things and states of affairs are ordered. Techne Theory shows how to use this concept to cut through the Romantic notion of art as a kind of magic by returning to the original sense of art as techne, the standpoint of the person who actually knows how to make a work of art. Understood as techne, art-making, like all other cultural accomplishments, is a form of work performed by an artisan who has inherited the know-how of previous generations of artisans. Along the way, Techne Theory cuts through the humanist-structuralist impasse over the question of artistic agency and explains what 'form' really means.
In Eros in Mourning verfolgt Henry Staten das Projekt des 'deidealisierenden Denkens' als apokryphe und subversive Tendenz in den herrschenden Traditionen des europäischen Idealismus und Transzendentalismus. Initiiert und aufrechterhalten wird das Momentum der Deidealisierung durch den erotischen Affekt als eines wesentlichen, aber im historischen Prozess konsequent unterdrückten bzw. metaphysisch ueberformten Impulses. Eros in Trauer beginnt mit einer Lektuere der Ilias, die aufzeigt, wie Homer, noch nicht beeinflusst durch die Ideologie der Transzendenz, die 'betrachtende' und zugleich 'widerspiegelnde' Struktur der Trauer als Trauer um den eigenen Tod analysiert. In den Lektueren von Dante, Hamlet, La Princesse de Cleves, Heart of Darkness und Lacan, beschreibt Staten weiterhin die 'thanatoerotische Hysterie', die durch das Gespenst des toten und verwesenden Leibes ausgelöst wird, welcher auch der Körper der sexuellen Liebe ist und, in der christlich-platonischen Tradition, eher weiblich als männlich. St. John jedoch, gewisse Troubadoure und Milton bieten Einsichten in eine eher affirmative Beziehung zum 'Eros in Trauer'.