Survival: A Theological-Political Genealogy

Adam Y. Stern

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2021

Survival

A Theological-Political Genealogy

Adam Y. Stern

In the series Intellectual History of the Modern Age

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812297867

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Survival, Adam Stern asks what texts and traditions have made survival a recognizable element of our current political vocabulary. Examining works by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, and Sigmund Freud, Stern shows that survival belongs to a history of debates about the sovereignty and subjection of Christ's body.

Author / Editor information

Adam Y. Stern is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews

"Adam Stern's innovative and astute study of the concept of survival is both expansively far-reaching and acutely focused. One might mistakenly think that the work is another survey of a certain line of twentieth-century German-Jewish thought. In fact, it is a work on the Christian logic that pervades these thinkers. Stern's analysis ranges masterfully from Pseudo-Dionysius to Shakespeare, to tell its own story about the surreptitious power of Christianity. Stern decenters the concept of survival, which has become so frequently synonymous with post-Holocaust Judaism, and reveals how the image of resurrection is in fact its driving force."—Sarah Hammerschlag, University of Chicago

"Adam Stern's remarkable book offers a set of lucidly argued readings of twentieth-century German-Jewish thinkers through the prism of 'survival.' Joining biopolitics to theology, he constructs a revelatory critical genealogy of survival by tracing the importance of a Christian-inflected discussion of survival in Jewish thought, and outlines its political forms. Casting a critical eye on competing claims to sovereignty, Stern shows how all sacralizing discourses about survival—including Israeli military mobilizations—paper over the fragility of the mortal body. His is an original, highly innovative work that is deeply informed and rigorously argued."—Carolyn Dean, Yale University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
ABBREVIATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
INTRODUCTION. Beginnings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1 The Elements of Survivalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
CHAPTER 2 The Archaeology of Survival Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
CHAPTER 3 The Imitation of Christ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
CHAPTER 4 The Sovereign in the Age of Its Eucharistic Reproducibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
CHAPTER 5 The Empty Tomb Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
EPILOGUE Other Thoughts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Other: 0
Keywords: Political Science; Religion; Public Policy; Religious Studies

eBook

Published: March 26, 2021
ISBN: 9780812297867