Category: Testimony

Book of the Week

Donald Harman Akenson, Surpassing Wonder. The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds. New York: Harcourt Brace; Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. 672 p. $37.95 CAD. ISBN 9780773522893.

finding this volume is the bibliographical highlight for the end of this week. In a continuous search for the Bibliography one may find gems. I have found one yesterday evening. after reading a few pages I have realized that the alternative perspectives to the conventional readings, I was so eagerly hunting, were right under my nose (in one of my digital folders). what a night!

Aphorisms and Kafka

The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka. Edited by Reiner Stach and translated by Shelley Frisch. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022. 256 p. $24.95/£20.00 ISBN 9780691205922

this new translation of Kafka’s Zürau aphorisms is a wonderful undertaking that allows the reader to easily see how this bilingual edition opens up new and complex paths in reading Kafka and his aphorisms. the dynamic of this editorial enterprise is an opportunity for the reader to reconnect, once again, with the author’s lines and with some of his thought fragments.

as a fragmentary writing this volume is another doorway into a particularly fascinating world of ideas. 

Discourse and Religion

The volume Discourse Research and Religion. Disciplinary Use and Interdisciplinary Dialogues, edited by Jay Johnston and Kocku von Stuckrad (Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2021) is a comprehensive and systematic attempt to promote the discursive study of religion.

The discursive dimension in the production of knowledge allows a critical analysis of academic practice, scholarly communication or open peer-review. To whom the volume will appeal is a question of openness to the large variety of disciplines as, but not restricted to, religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies or theology.

The volume has an interview with Russell M. McCutcheon, discourses and sociology of knowledge (Reiner Keller), religious discourse (Dominique Maingueneau), an analysis of the historical discourse (Kocku von Stuckrad), the multicultural drama of CDA and DST perspectives (Frans Wijsen), discourse theories in cultural studies (Anne Koch), discursive analysis of religion and political science (Erin K. Wilson), discourse and economy question (Guy Redden), dynamics of the human rights discourse (Hans G. Kippenberg), gender (Morny Joy), beyond language (Jay Johnston).

This volume is a must reading!

Ioan Petru Culianu, 05.01.1950

about interpretation

“23. Interpretation

If I read me, then I read into me:
I can’t construe myself objectively.
But he who climbs consuming his own might
Bears me with him unto the brighter light.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 15.

 

Eef van Breen Group – Walk of Doubts (Groningen, 2019)