{"product_id":"profanations-9781890951825","title":"Profanations","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has always been an original reader of texts  understanding their many rich and multiple historical  aesthetic  and political meanings and effects. In Profanations  Agamben has assembled for the first time some of his most pivotal essays on photography  the novel  and film. A meditation on memory and oblivion  on what is lost and what remains  Profanations proves yet again that Agamben is one of the most provocative writers of our times.  In ten essays  Agamben rethinks approaches to a series of literary and philosophical problems: the relation between genius  ego  and theories of subjectivity; the problem of messianic time as explicated in both images and lived experience; parody as a literary paradigm; the potential of magic to provide an ethical canon.  The range of topics and themes addressed here attest to the very creativity of Agambens singular mode of thought and his persistent pursuit to grasp the act of witnessing  sometimes futile  sometimes earth-shattering  the talking cricket in Pinocchio; helpers in Kafkas novels; pictorial representations of the Last Judgment  of anonymous female faces  and of Orson Wellss infamous object of obsession Rosebud. In Praise of Profanity  the central essay of this small but dense book  confronts the question of profanity as the crucial political task of the moment.  An act of resistance to every form of separation  the concept of profanation  as both the return to common usage and sacrifice  reorients perceptions of how power  consumption  and use interweave to produce an urgent political modality and desire: to profane the unprofanable. In short  Agamben provides not only a new and potent theoretical model but also a writerly style that itself forges inescapable links between literature  politics  and philosophy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44936789852213,"sku":"ByrdShop_189095182X","price":97.65,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781890951825.jpg?v=1787335931","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/profanations-9781890951825","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}