Unlearning with Hannah Arendt
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
After observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt formulated her controversial concept of the 'banality of evil' and asked the question: how can seemingly normal people carry out genocidal acts? She found her answer by focusing on the machinery of Nazi genocide and the organizational capacity of the victims: the Jewish Councils drawing up lists for deportation. The latter proved hugely controversial when the book was first published in serial form in the New Yorker.
Anchoring its discussion in the themes of laughter, translation, forgiveness, and dramatization, this book explores how the iconic political theorist 'unlearned' trends and patterns to establish her own theoretical praxis.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
German political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906 1975) took the philosophical line of questioning to the extreme when she advised that we not just question, but unlearn what we know. Journalist and translator Knott focuses on four concepts Arendt extensively unlearned laughter, translation, forgiveness, and dramatization drawing on her books, essays, and conversations and correspondence with other thinkers of the time. Through unlearning with Arendt, laughter transforms from a reaction to a comical situation to a way of identifying absurdity, evil, or serious matters. Forgiveness becomes a necessary path to the future instead of a mere forgetting of the past. Language proves to be limiting, especially when rebuilding politics or law with imprecise terminology. But Arendt's bilingual life, alternating between English and German, identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each. Intent on showing Arendt's words to be re-readable and re-learnable, Knott does the same with her own overview of Arendt's reeducation.
