The Visitation of Hannah Arendt

Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts focuses on the Jewish textual tradition as well as the ways it evolves in response to new intellectual, historical, social and political contexts. Fostering dialogue between literary, philosophical, political and religious perspectives, this series, which consists of original scholarship and proceedings of international conferences, reflects contemporary concerns of Jewish Studies in the broadest sense.  

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The Visitation of Hannah Arendt is an attempt to literally enact Arendt’s notion of "natality". Arendt, known to a large extent through her engagement with the public sphere and with political discourse, is invited here to pay intimate visitations to four different figures: an anonymous student, the poetess Dahlia Ravikovich, the ghost of Stefan Zweig and Michal, Saul’s daughter. The intellectual visitation, as a complex process of both mimesis and rejection, is revealed to be a natality, a rebirth in spirit. The book presents an aesthetic-semiotic reading of Arendt by traversing the ensemble of her work. A special chapter is dedicated to Eichmann in Jerusalem.