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Books by Adam R Rosenthal

Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life, 2024

Preface and Introduction

Poetics and the Gift, 2022

A close reading of Emerson's 1844 essay, "Gifts," with a focus on what he calls the "flower of co... more A close reading of Emerson's 1844 essay, "Gifts," with a focus on what he calls the "flower of commodities."

Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida, 2022

A reading of the important of poetry and the gift in Derrida's writings, from Economimesis to Giv... more A reading of the important of poetry and the gift in Derrida's writings, from Economimesis to Given Time and beyond.

Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida, 2022

Using a broad, comparative approach, this study shows how the figure of the gift structures poeti... more Using a broad, comparative approach, this study shows how the figure of the gift structures poetic discourse and does so from the age of Homer up through twenty-first century conceptual poetics. Beginning from a. new interpretation of Derrida's writings on the gift, Rosenthal argues that this ambivalent figure names at one and the same time poetry's most extreme aneconomic privilege and the point of its closest contact with the interested exchange of the market. In this way, the gift conducts material relays of patronage and theories of poetic origination in genius, inspiration and imagination. Poetics and the Gift capitalizes on this double function in order to read material historical accounts of poetry alongside philosophical and poetic ones.

Papers by Adam R Rosenthal

Research in Phenomenology, 2022

This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida’s writings... more This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida’s writings on Heidegger and the gift. In the first section of the essay, I situate the publication of the latter half of Derrida’s 1978–79 seminar against his writings on the gift generally, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the second section, I explain how the second volume of Donner le temps relates to the first. In the final three sections of the paper, I focus on three prominent topics of the seminar, so as to show how they impact our previous understanding of major aspects of Derrida’s thought: first, the Heideggerian thinking of the es gibt, as it relates to the gift’s unconditionality. Second, the problematic of the Kunstwerk, as it informs Derrida’s thinking of récit. Third, the problem of Dichtung, as it is linked to the poématique.

SubStance, 2019

Abstract:In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it ... more Abstract:In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separated from modern and ancient questions concerning naming. Beginning with a philological analysis of the word "clone," I then turn to the conceptual parallels between vegetative reproduction and linguistic reproduction. Through a comparison between the clone and the double, I argue, by way of conclusion, that the fear of the clone corresponds to a relatively new notion of genetic identity, which has repercussions far beyond the bio-technological realm.

Oxford Literary Review, 2019

This essay examines Derrida's discussion, alongside Elisabeth Roudinesco, of the stability of... more This essay examines Derrida's discussion, alongside Elisabeth Roudinesco, of the stability of the family unit in For What Tomorrow… By following Derrida's serial revisions of Roudinesco's claim tha...

Poetics Today, 2021

In this article the author explores how the problem of the seminar enters into the work of Jacque... more In this article the author explores how the problem of the seminar enters into the work of Jacques Derrida. He shows how it emerges not only within the context of the teaching institution but also as a conceptual thematic with a history far in excess of the educational institutions of France. As early as 1968 and as late as 2003, the word, concept, figure, and institution of “the seminar” was one that Derrida worked to define and problematize. The author thus asks how Derrida’s autobiographical relationship with the institution of the seminar both influenced and was influenced by what one might call the philosophical problem of the seminar. As Derrida points out on a number of occasions, the seminar is not a neutral space. Indeed, it is a particularly ambivalent one, as early discussions of it in “Plato’s Pharmacy” and Clang show. In appropriating the form, not only for his teaching but also as a problematic of the seminars that he gave, the author argues that Derrida precisely embr...

Studies in Romanticism, 2016

The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obs... more The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... --A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancients, Relative to the Subject of Love (1) I. Given Names THE TITLE OF SHELLEY'S "HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY," as has often been pointed out, situates the poem within a tradition that it will attempt to displace. Naming itself a hymn, Shelley's poem invokes a Christian concept of divinity that it ironizes and thereby calls into question. As Earl Wasserman, Spencer Hall, and Richard Cronin have shown, the "Hymn" incorporates Christian thematics throughout, only to disfigure them by way of a series of reinscriptions of canonical doctrine. (2) Not only does the poem's speaker decry the "name of God," but in championing the secularized virtues of "Love, Hope, and Self-esteem" (37), he also refers by negation to the love of God, hope of salvation, and faith in a transcendent divinity. (3) Of course, the hymnic genre predates the Christian tradition's appropriation of it, and there are also many questions that remain unanswered concerning the Greek influences in the poem: formally, that of the Greek hymnic tradition, and conceptually, that of a Platonic metaphysics. (4) This latter, much derided hypothesis has received no shortage of criticism over the last sixty years, and mostly with due cause. (5) Motivated largely by the Platonic resonances of Shelley's title and his avowed interest in Plato's thought, this position has been condemned not only for its oversimplification of Shelley's stance and tendency to reduce it to mere Platonism, but also for its neglect of Shelley's "intellectual philosophy" and the sophistication of his reading of Plato, which would much better be expressed as reflective than merely mimetic. One need not look very hard to see extra-Platonic elements infiltrate the "Hymn," most notably those empirical or utilitarian items such as the "world" that, as Pollin has pointed out, are to be consecrated alongside the transcendent ones. (6) If, nevertheless, the question of Plato's influence has remained persistent for readers of the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," it is ultimately less by virtue of any Platonism in the poem than by the title's inscription of a more or less Platonic phrase--a phrase that Shelley himself would use to translate Plato. Yet critics of the "Hymn" seem destined to remain conflicted even on this point, for it was not until nearly two years after Shelley's composition of the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" on the shores of Lake Geneva that he would translate that fateful line: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as, "but [he] would turn towards the wide ocean of intellectual beauty," in his rendering of Plato's Symposium (Shelley 449). (7) The translation would then be a transcription from his "Hymn" to Plato's Symposium, and this in the most literal sense of the word. For it would here be a matter of writing across texts, from one context to another, from one body, title, or text to another, but also from one language to another. We could call this a trans-crib-lation, for it departs at the same time from Plato's textual source and his own "Hymn," which ought to be, but is not, foreign to it. "Intellectual Beauty" (as a phrase) is then both more and less Platonic. For, as is evinced by the chronology of the poem's composition, it is born out of Shelley's own work, only to converge with Plato at a later date. That the phrase "Intellectual Beauty," moreover, only appears in the "Hymn's" title, as though it were a leftover or supernumerary of the text, further exacerbates this already tenuous relation between the poem and the Platonic tradition. Yet for all of these difficulties, Shelley's title nevertheless suffices to articulate a bond that no amount of disapproval, dissuasion, or disavowal would be capable of fully denying, and not only because of the possibility that Shelley had read Plato's Symposium prior to composing the "Hymn," nor, conversely, simply because he may have translated the Symposium with his "Hymn" in mind. …

Oxford Literary Review, 2018

Derrida's concept of survival, born out of Benjamin's work on translation in The Task of ... more Derrida's concept of survival, born out of Benjamin's work on translation in The Task of the Translator, has become a fixed element of readings of his work in recent years. Of particular interest in his final seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign and The Death Penalty, survival might be said to do to the concept of life what writing had done to that of speech. In this essay, I explore how the Derridean concept of survival, far from excluding dreams of immortality, in fact opens them. By putting deconstruction into contact with biotechnological fantasies of brain uploading and biological immortality, this essay asks what deconstruction's love of life might be able to teach us about the desire for immortal life in general, and biotechnological ventures, such as Dmitri Itskov's 2045 Initiative, in particular.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 2015

MLN, 2015

Poe, éprouvant peut-être le sinistre pressentiment d’une fin subite, avait désigné MM. Griswold e... more Poe, éprouvant peut-être le sinistre pressentiment d’une fin subite, avait désigné MM. Griswold et Willis pour mettre ses œuvres en ordre, écrire sa vie, et restaurer sa mémoire. Ce pédagogue-vampire a diffamé longuement son ami dans un énorme article plat et haineux, juste en tête de l’édition posthume de ses œuvres. –Il n’existe donc pas en Amérique d’ordonnance qui interdise aux chiens l’entrée des cimetières?

Research in Phenomenology, 2022

This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida's writings... more This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida's writings on Heidegger and the gift. In the first section of the essay, I situate the publication of the latter half of Derrida's 1978-79 seminar against his writings on the gift generally, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the second section, I explain how the second volume of Donner le temps relates to the first. In the final three sections of the paper, I focus on three prominent topics of the seminar, so as to show how they impact our previous understanding of major aspects of Derrida's thought: first, the Heideggerian thinking of the es gibt, as it relates to the gift's unconditionality. Second, the problematic of the Kunstwerk, as it informs Derrida's thinking of récit. Third, the problem of Dichtung, as it is linked to the poématique.

Poetics Today, 2021

Beginning in 2008, with the French publication of The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, Éditions... more Beginning in 2008, with the French publication of The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, Éditions Galilée, the University of Chicago Press and an international editorial team initiated the process of editing, publishing, and translating, in reverse chronological order, the complete seminars of Jacques Derrida. These seminars, given variously at the Sorbonne, the École normale supérieure (ENS), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, the University of California, Irvine, the New School for Social Research, the Cardozo Law School, and New York University, encompass material presented as early as 1959 and as late as 2003. With Derrida’s death in 2004, the seminar publications—projected to continue well into the 2050s—became the principal source of all Derrida’s future, posthumous publications, now under the direction of Katie Chenoweth, director of the Bibliothèque Derrida, at the French publishing house Éditions du Seuil. This special issue of Poetics Today addresses two questions that are raised by this enterprise: First, how does the publication, mediatization, and mass dissemination of Derrida’s teaching transform his corpus? Second, how does this corpus already speak to, anticipate, and pre-program the virtualization, translation, and transmission of the space of “the seminar”?

SubStance, 2019

In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separa... more In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separated from modern and ancient questions concerning naming. Beginning with a philological analysis of the word "clone," I then turn to the conceptual parallels between vegetative reproduction and linguistic reproduction. Through a comparison between the clone and the double, I argue, by way of conclusion, that the fear of the clone corresponds to a relatively new notion of genetic identity, which has repercussions far beyond the biotechnological realm.

Oxford Literary Review, 2018

Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life, 2024

Preface and Introduction

Poetics and the Gift, 2022

A close reading of Emerson's 1844 essay, "Gifts," with a focus on what he calls the "flower of co... more A close reading of Emerson's 1844 essay, "Gifts," with a focus on what he calls the "flower of commodities."

Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida, 2022

A reading of the important of poetry and the gift in Derrida's writings, from Economimesis to Giv... more A reading of the important of poetry and the gift in Derrida's writings, from Economimesis to Given Time and beyond.

Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida, 2022

Using a broad, comparative approach, this study shows how the figure of the gift structures poeti... more Using a broad, comparative approach, this study shows how the figure of the gift structures poetic discourse and does so from the age of Homer up through twenty-first century conceptual poetics. Beginning from a. new interpretation of Derrida's writings on the gift, Rosenthal argues that this ambivalent figure names at one and the same time poetry's most extreme aneconomic privilege and the point of its closest contact with the interested exchange of the market. In this way, the gift conducts material relays of patronage and theories of poetic origination in genius, inspiration and imagination. Poetics and the Gift capitalizes on this double function in order to read material historical accounts of poetry alongside philosophical and poetic ones.

Research in Phenomenology, 2022

This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida’s writings... more This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida’s writings on Heidegger and the gift. In the first section of the essay, I situate the publication of the latter half of Derrida’s 1978–79 seminar against his writings on the gift generally, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the second section, I explain how the second volume of Donner le temps relates to the first. In the final three sections of the paper, I focus on three prominent topics of the seminar, so as to show how they impact our previous understanding of major aspects of Derrida’s thought: first, the Heideggerian thinking of the es gibt, as it relates to the gift’s unconditionality. Second, the problematic of the Kunstwerk, as it informs Derrida’s thinking of récit. Third, the problem of Dichtung, as it is linked to the poématique.

SubStance, 2019

Abstract:In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it ... more Abstract:In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separated from modern and ancient questions concerning naming. Beginning with a philological analysis of the word "clone," I then turn to the conceptual parallels between vegetative reproduction and linguistic reproduction. Through a comparison between the clone and the double, I argue, by way of conclusion, that the fear of the clone corresponds to a relatively new notion of genetic identity, which has repercussions far beyond the bio-technological realm.

Oxford Literary Review, 2019

This essay examines Derrida's discussion, alongside Elisabeth Roudinesco, of the stability of... more This essay examines Derrida's discussion, alongside Elisabeth Roudinesco, of the stability of the family unit in For What Tomorrow… By following Derrida's serial revisions of Roudinesco's claim tha...

Poetics Today, 2021

In this article the author explores how the problem of the seminar enters into the work of Jacque... more In this article the author explores how the problem of the seminar enters into the work of Jacques Derrida. He shows how it emerges not only within the context of the teaching institution but also as a conceptual thematic with a history far in excess of the educational institutions of France. As early as 1968 and as late as 2003, the word, concept, figure, and institution of “the seminar” was one that Derrida worked to define and problematize. The author thus asks how Derrida’s autobiographical relationship with the institution of the seminar both influenced and was influenced by what one might call the philosophical problem of the seminar. As Derrida points out on a number of occasions, the seminar is not a neutral space. Indeed, it is a particularly ambivalent one, as early discussions of it in “Plato’s Pharmacy” and Clang show. In appropriating the form, not only for his teaching but also as a problematic of the seminars that he gave, the author argues that Derrida precisely embr...

Studies in Romanticism, 2016

The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obs... more The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... --A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancients, Relative to the Subject of Love (1) I. Given Names THE TITLE OF SHELLEY'S "HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY," as has often been pointed out, situates the poem within a tradition that it will attempt to displace. Naming itself a hymn, Shelley's poem invokes a Christian concept of divinity that it ironizes and thereby calls into question. As Earl Wasserman, Spencer Hall, and Richard Cronin have shown, the "Hymn" incorporates Christian thematics throughout, only to disfigure them by way of a series of reinscriptions of canonical doctrine. (2) Not only does the poem's speaker decry the "name of God," but in championing the secularized virtues of "Love, Hope, and Self-esteem" (37), he also refers by negation to the love of God, hope of salvation, and faith in a transcendent divinity. (3) Of course, the hymnic genre predates the Christian tradition's appropriation of it, and there are also many questions that remain unanswered concerning the Greek influences in the poem: formally, that of the Greek hymnic tradition, and conceptually, that of a Platonic metaphysics. (4) This latter, much derided hypothesis has received no shortage of criticism over the last sixty years, and mostly with due cause. (5) Motivated largely by the Platonic resonances of Shelley's title and his avowed interest in Plato's thought, this position has been condemned not only for its oversimplification of Shelley's stance and tendency to reduce it to mere Platonism, but also for its neglect of Shelley's "intellectual philosophy" and the sophistication of his reading of Plato, which would much better be expressed as reflective than merely mimetic. One need not look very hard to see extra-Platonic elements infiltrate the "Hymn," most notably those empirical or utilitarian items such as the "world" that, as Pollin has pointed out, are to be consecrated alongside the transcendent ones. (6) If, nevertheless, the question of Plato's influence has remained persistent for readers of the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," it is ultimately less by virtue of any Platonism in the poem than by the title's inscription of a more or less Platonic phrase--a phrase that Shelley himself would use to translate Plato. Yet critics of the "Hymn" seem destined to remain conflicted even on this point, for it was not until nearly two years after Shelley's composition of the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" on the shores of Lake Geneva that he would translate that fateful line: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as, "but [he] would turn towards the wide ocean of intellectual beauty," in his rendering of Plato's Symposium (Shelley 449). (7) The translation would then be a transcription from his "Hymn" to Plato's Symposium, and this in the most literal sense of the word. For it would here be a matter of writing across texts, from one context to another, from one body, title, or text to another, but also from one language to another. We could call this a trans-crib-lation, for it departs at the same time from Plato's textual source and his own "Hymn," which ought to be, but is not, foreign to it. "Intellectual Beauty" (as a phrase) is then both more and less Platonic. For, as is evinced by the chronology of the poem's composition, it is born out of Shelley's own work, only to converge with Plato at a later date. That the phrase "Intellectual Beauty," moreover, only appears in the "Hymn's" title, as though it were a leftover or supernumerary of the text, further exacerbates this already tenuous relation between the poem and the Platonic tradition. Yet for all of these difficulties, Shelley's title nevertheless suffices to articulate a bond that no amount of disapproval, dissuasion, or disavowal would be capable of fully denying, and not only because of the possibility that Shelley had read Plato's Symposium prior to composing the "Hymn," nor, conversely, simply because he may have translated the Symposium with his "Hymn" in mind. …

Oxford Literary Review, 2018

Derrida's concept of survival, born out of Benjamin's work on translation in The Task of ... more Derrida's concept of survival, born out of Benjamin's work on translation in The Task of the Translator, has become a fixed element of readings of his work in recent years. Of particular interest in his final seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign and The Death Penalty, survival might be said to do to the concept of life what writing had done to that of speech. In this essay, I explore how the Derridean concept of survival, far from excluding dreams of immortality, in fact opens them. By putting deconstruction into contact with biotechnological fantasies of brain uploading and biological immortality, this essay asks what deconstruction's love of life might be able to teach us about the desire for immortal life in general, and biotechnological ventures, such as Dmitri Itskov's 2045 Initiative, in particular.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 2015

MLN, 2015

Poe, éprouvant peut-être le sinistre pressentiment d’une fin subite, avait désigné MM. Griswold e... more Poe, éprouvant peut-être le sinistre pressentiment d’une fin subite, avait désigné MM. Griswold et Willis pour mettre ses œuvres en ordre, écrire sa vie, et restaurer sa mémoire. Ce pédagogue-vampire a diffamé longuement son ami dans un énorme article plat et haineux, juste en tête de l’édition posthume de ses œuvres. –Il n’existe donc pas en Amérique d’ordonnance qui interdise aux chiens l’entrée des cimetières?

Research in Phenomenology, 2022

This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida's writings... more This essay explores the importance of Donner le temps II within the context of Derrida's writings on Heidegger and the gift. In the first section of the essay, I situate the publication of the latter half of Derrida's 1978-79 seminar against his writings on the gift generally, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the second section, I explain how the second volume of Donner le temps relates to the first. In the final three sections of the paper, I focus on three prominent topics of the seminar, so as to show how they impact our previous understanding of major aspects of Derrida's thought: first, the Heideggerian thinking of the es gibt, as it relates to the gift's unconditionality. Second, the problematic of the Kunstwerk, as it informs Derrida's thinking of récit. Third, the problem of Dichtung, as it is linked to the poématique.

Poetics Today, 2021

Beginning in 2008, with the French publication of The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, Éditions... more Beginning in 2008, with the French publication of The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, Éditions Galilée, the University of Chicago Press and an international editorial team initiated the process of editing, publishing, and translating, in reverse chronological order, the complete seminars of Jacques Derrida. These seminars, given variously at the Sorbonne, the École normale supérieure (ENS), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, the University of California, Irvine, the New School for Social Research, the Cardozo Law School, and New York University, encompass material presented as early as 1959 and as late as 2003. With Derrida’s death in 2004, the seminar publications—projected to continue well into the 2050s—became the principal source of all Derrida’s future, posthumous publications, now under the direction of Katie Chenoweth, director of the Bibliothèque Derrida, at the French publishing house Éditions du Seuil. This special issue of Poetics Today addresses two questions that are raised by this enterprise: First, how does the publication, mediatization, and mass dissemination of Derrida’s teaching transform his corpus? Second, how does this corpus already speak to, anticipate, and pre-program the virtualization, translation, and transmission of the space of “the seminar”?

SubStance, 2019

In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separa... more In "Clon'd" I ask in what way the problem of the "clone," as it confronts us today, can be separated from modern and ancient questions concerning naming. Beginning with a philological analysis of the word "clone," I then turn to the conceptual parallels between vegetative reproduction and linguistic reproduction. Through a comparison between the clone and the double, I argue, by way of conclusion, that the fear of the clone corresponds to a relatively new notion of genetic identity, which has repercussions far beyond the biotechnological realm.

Oxford Literary Review, 2018

Oxford Literary Review, 2018

Pli, 2015

This paper attempts to read in three of Heidegger’s post-war lectures from 1955–1958 a growing ph... more This paper attempts to read in three of Heidegger’s post-war lectures from 1955–1958 a growing philosophical concern with the title. By demonstrating how the subject of the title arises with ever greater insistence in The Principle of Reason, Basic Principles of Thinking, and “The Essence of Language,” it argues that the logic of “untitling” here developed is integral for understanding the stakes of Heidegger’s thinking of “Ereignis” and “Geschichte.” Particularly in Basic Principles of Thinking, the title of the lecture becomes an exemplary site in which the event of thought can be viewed, and through which this event can even come to be. At the limit, the title’s claims and Heidegger’s claims about the title should force us to reconsider the nature of the event of appropriation, Ereignis, and the role of language for it.

Studies in Romanticism, 2016

Examination of Shelley's process of radical re-naming in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty."

Among Baudelaire’s critical writings his essays on Poe have long been considered some of the most... more Among Baudelaire’s critical writings his essays on Poe have long been considered some of the most important. While most studies of these essays have been dedicated to Poe’s influence on Baudelaire or Baudelaire’s extensive borrowings in the composing of “Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages” and “Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvres,” the present study attends to the unexpected mnemonic orientation of each text. By examining the diametrically opposed visions of memory they put forth this essay looks at the broader implications of “Poe’s memory” for Baudelaire’s work at large.

According to Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, the desire to be immortal is grounded in the structure... more According to Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, the desire to be immortal is grounded in the structure of mortal nature, which “does all it can to live forever and to be immortal” (206d-209a). For Aristotle as well, writing in De Anima, immortality is thought from the point of view of mortality. Nevertheless, for both, this inherent and fundamental desire is destined to fail. For, if there is one thing that mortal nature wants (immortality), it is also the one thing that, being mortal, it can never have: the immutable and unchanging life of the gods. And so, failing to get what it wants, life must settle for the next best thing, and it is in this way that it opens itself to forms of reproduction: “The most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the immortal and divine” (De Anima II.4 415a25-a28). We all want immortality, but, in fact, what we are capable of are only ever failed attempts that may result in survival.
This seminar is interested in exploring such failed attempts, as well as the proliferation of reproductive technologies that emerge in their wake. It wants to think together the various projects of archivization, supplementation, inscription, and body modification, etc., that are made in the name of immortality and life extension, as well as to explore the relations among what may survive in them, be it a name, fame, memory, beauty, a soul, mind, DNA, a body, code, ashes, or nothing. The seminar is particularly interested in how the “body” or the “self” becomes involved in processes of supplementation, prostheticization, cyborgification, and poeticization so as to achieve this end, and the modes (literary, technological, biological, aesthetic, etc.) through which they are ventured.

Some topics that participants may choose to explore include:

-Poetic discourse as a technic of immortalization
-Modern technological attempts at de-extinction, genetic engineering death, cryogenics, and blood transfusions, aiming to radically extend the upper limit of human life.
-Philosophy as learning how to die
-Heidegger on Dasein, mortality and immortality
-Nietzsche and the Eternal Return of the Same
-Biotech and the big business of radical life extension
-Renaissance Immortality
-Transgenic Poetry
-Derridean survivance and life-death
-Mechanical Reproduction and Biological Reproduction
-Textual Lives and Afterlives

Presented on March 24th, 2017 at a Texas A&M University Roundtable on Geoffrey Bennington’s Scatt... more Presented on March 24th, 2017 at a Texas A&M University Roundtable on Geoffrey Bennington’s Scatter 1.