Hannah Arendt: Life is a Narrative

By Julia Kristeva

Book Overview

In this volume, based on the series of Alexander Lectures she delivered at the University of Toronto, Julia Kristeva explores the philosophical aspects of Hannah Arendt's work: her understanding of such concepts as language, self, body, political space, and life. Kristeva's aim is to clarify contradictions in Arendt's thought as well as correct misapprehensions about her political and philosophical views. The first two chapters describe how Arendt followed an original conception of human narrative, such that life, action, and even thought, are only human when they can be narrated and thus shared with other persons who, through the evocation of memory, complete the story and make history into a condensed sign, into a revelation of the 'who.' The third chapter concentrates on Arendt's work in relation to her twentieth-century contemporaries, especially Isak Dinesen, Brecht, Kafka, and Nathalie Sarraute. In the last two chapters, on the body and the Kantian concept of judgment, Kristeva offers a subtle critical exploration of Arendt's ignoring of the world of the unconscious opened up by psychoanalysis, an exploration that, paradoxically, reveals the political force of Arendt's acceptance of herself as woman and Jew. Kristeva's account of Arendt's 'philosophy of narrative' is clear, coherent, forceful, and often impassioned. Much has been written in North America about Arendt's political work, but little about her more philosophical endeavours. Hannah Arendt: Life Is a Narrative makes a compelling case that Arendt may be the twentieth century's only true political philosopher.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802035213
• ISBN13: 9780802035219
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The intellectual overview of a political science genius

It has been a long time since I went to a baseball game, but trying to keep track of the intellectual action in the biography of Hannah Arendt by Julia Kristeva reminded me of the game. Eventually, I even thought of a song, "Catfish" by Bob Dylan (Words by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy) recorded on July 28, 1975, an outtake from the album "Desire" that was finally released in a three-CD package called "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 [rare and unreleased] 1961-1991." There was once a pitcher called Catfish Hunter, million dollar man, and Dylan's chorus said, "Nobody can throw the ball Like Catfish can." I have had the words since "The Songs of Bob Dylan" was released in 1976, but I didn't hear the song until 1991. Having an English translation from 2001 of a feminist biography of a political scientist of the mid-twentieth century captures the intellection activity that interests me about as well as "Catfish" captures the action of a baseball game.Lazy stadium night, Catfish on the mound,"Strike three" the umpire said,Batter have to go back and sit down.There are three chapters in HANNAH ARENDT, and the third has 219 notes. Basic statistics on how much Julia Kristeva is merely educating herself in public by providing a reading from Arendt's books might be obtained by counting the Ibid.s. Counting backwards, I found 133 Ibid.s in the notes for Chapter 3, including my favorite note:"99. "Letter to the Romans 7:21, drafted between 54 and 58 a.d., cited in ibid., p. 64." (p. 268).A lot of the books I read lately keep trying to tell me when the Bible was written, but I never noticed it in a note before. Usually my favorite notes are about Nietzsche, like:"123. Ibid., p. 165, citing Nietzsche, THE GAY SCIENCE, no. 310""126. Concerning the `forgetting' that Nietzsche revives see p. 237; and Paul Ricoeur, paper presented at the Hannah Arendt Conference at the Grande Bibliotheque de France, December 6, 1997.""128. Ibid., pp. 169-70, citing Nietzsche, THE WILL TO POWER, no. 585 A, pp. 316-19."`131. LM, "Willing," p. 172, citing Nietzsche, THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, pt. 3, "Before Sunrise." '`187. Ibid., citing Nietzsche, "The Use and Abuse of History," pp. 6, 7.'"189. Ibid., citing Nietzsche, THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS, p. 61"`192. Ibid., pp. 63, 72-73 ("even in old Kant: the categorical imperative reeks of cruelty").'Nietzsche wrote such things about Kant, and it is a bit difficult to imagine that Kristeva and Arendt would associate such ideas with the great weight of the past if Nietzsche hadn't made this connection first. Understanding philosophy is a process that can be compared to intellectually building a rehash of old, familiar plays, as if it is about something like a baseball game, which has an umpire who gets to decide when an easy pop fly is an infield fly rule call that makes the batter out, but the umpire does not have time to say anything until after it is all over when a triple play picks off the runners before they have a chance to t