The City in the Distance
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FINALIST, 38th ANNUAL FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE
Exploring the ever-changing philosophy of city life with Jean-Luc Nancy
In The City in the Distance, Jean-Luc Nancy embarks on nothing less than a philosophy of the city. Drawing on his widely discussed accounts of sense and of the fraught question of community, Nancy views the city as the site of a disposition that is constantly undergoing metamorphoses.
Far from an abstract account, Nancy attends in the most concrete way possible to the workings of a city not typically taken as paradigmatic, Los Angeles. As Jean-Christophe Bailly suggests in his foreword, Nancy joins Walter Benjamin in thinking the city not from an external vantage point, but on its own terms.
Written in a tone that is always poetic, at times even lyrical, The City in the Distance is thought-provoking and a pleasure to read. As a philosophical and writerly meditation, a research-creation of sorts, the book invests a place (here the city of Los Angeles) with words and language in order to make it produce its own space and time.---Verena Andermatt Conley, Harvard University
Nancy’s little book helps us dispel the notion that there is a primordial stability of home to be defended against the disruptions of migration. For Nancy, the life of the city exemplifies the mobility or ‘passing by’ that is characteristic of ‘being with’ as an ontological condition.---Rafael Sánchez, Graduate Institute of Geneva
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.
Jean-Christophe Bailly (Foreword By)
Jean-Christophe Bailly teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Nature et du Paysage, in Blois, France. His books include The Animal Side and The Instant and Its Shadow, as well as many other books and artists’ catalogs in French.
Cory Stockwell (Translator)
Cory Stockwell is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His translations include books by Mariette Navarro and Pascal Bruckner.
Foreword: The City beyond the Place | vii
Jean-Christophe Bailly
Preface: The Uncivil City | xi
The City in the Distance | 1
First Part (1987): In the Distance . . . Los Angeles | 3
Second Part (1999): The City in the Distance | 16
Images of the City | 36
Traffic/Click | 60
The Two Futures of the City | 82
An Art of the City | 90
Rumoration | 111
Moments of the City | 114
Acknowledgments | 119
Notes | 121
