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Sex, more than just a part of our experience, troubles our conceptions of existence.
Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, ancient and modern, philosophical and literary, Jean-Luc Nancy explores and upholds the form-giving thrust of the drive. Nancy reminds us that we are more comfortable with the drama of prohibitions, ideals, repression, transgression, and destruction, which often hamper thinking about sex and gender, than with the affirmation of an originary trouble at the limits of language that divides being and opens the world.
Sexistence develops a new philosophical account of sexuality that resonates with contemporary research on gender and biopolitics. Without attempting to be comprehensive, the book ranges from the ancient world through psychoanalysis to discover the turbulence of the drive at the heart of existence.
Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Strasbourg and one of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century’s foremost thinkers of politics, art, and the body. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence. His book The Intruder was adapted into an acclaimed film by Claire Denis.
Steven Miller (Translator)
Steven Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is author of War After Death: On Violence and Its Limits and translator of books by Catherine Malabou, Étienne Balibar, and Anne Dufourmantelle.
Preliminaries | 1
A. Fatality? | 1
B. Liberation? | 5
C. Philosophy? | 10
D. Drive? | 17
E. Unsayable? | 21
1. Lifting | 26
2. Transmission | 28
3. Appropriation | 30
4. Fiction | 32
5. Real | 35
6. History | 38
7. Technics and Transcendence | 41
8. Excessive Nature | 45
9. Desire | 50
10. Continuous, Discontinuous | 53
11. Devouring | 57
12. Ass in Air | 61
13. Penetration | 66
14. Too Much, Too Little | 70
15. Sex Singular Plural | 74
16. not a word / I lacked | 79
17. Joy | 84
18. Troubles | 89
19. Love Unto Death | 97
20. Love Unto Life | 101
21. Erotic Novel | 108
Postlude | 119
Superfluous Supplement | 120
Notes | 123