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Claims that interpersonal recognition is constituted by performance, and brings performance theory into dialogue with poetics, politics, and philosophy. By observing Odysseus figures from Homer to Kleist, Ellwood Wiggins offers an alternative to conventional intellectual histories that situate the invention of the interior self in modernity.
List of contents
Overview of Contents ... vii
Illustrations ... viii
Abbreviations ... ix
A Note on Translations and Orthography ... xi
Introduction: Performing Recognition ... 1
Interiority Illusion
Instantaneousness Illusion
Recognition as Performance
Aims and Scope of Readings
Part I. Marking the Limits of Recognition: Between Aristotle and the Odyssey ... 31
1 "Just as the name itself signifies": Under the Sign of Recognition ... 37
Nostalgia and Recognition
Recognitions in Mycenae and Sparta
Nostalgic Recognition and Epic Afterness
Self-signification and the Nostalgia of Semiotics
2 "Recognition is a change": Performance in Motion ... 84
Rhapsodic Mimesis and Narration
Change in Aristotle's Physics and Poetics
Crying for Show in the Odyssey
Recognition in Performance Theory and Moral Philosophy
3 "From ignorance to knowledge": Penelope's Poetological Epistemology ... 131
Penelopean Epistemology (Reading Penelope)
Penelopean Poetics (Penelope Reading)
4 "Into friendship or enmity": An Ethics of Authentic Deception ... 164
5 "For those bound for good or bad fortune": Casualties of Recognition ... 193
Part II. Outing Interiority: Modern Recognitions ... 211
6 Self-Knowledge Between Plato and Shakespeare: Alcibiades and Troilus and Cressida ... 218
Philosophy or Theater?
Mirrored Dramatic Structures
Mirrored Selves
7 Metamorphoses of Recognition: Goethe's "Fortunate Event" ... 248
"Glückliches Ereignis" as Anagnorisis Scene
Recognizing Action: Visualizing Stories
Recognizing Things: Experiencing Ideas
Recognizing People: Moving Tableaux
8 Epistemologies of Recognition: Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris and the Spectacle of Catharsis ... 292
Spirals of Intertextual Performance
Intertextual Intersubjectivity
Intertextual Spectacle
The Effects of Tragedy
9 Politics of Recognition: Friends, Enemies, and Goethe's Iphigenie ... 324
Between Recognition and Acknowledgement
The Exception of Friendship
The Promise of Politics
10 The Fate of Recognition: Kleist's Penthesilea ... 361
The Mirrored Gaze
Plays within Plays
Concluding Reflections: Signifying Silence in Blumenberg and Kafka ... 403
Acknowledgements ... 417
Bibliography ... 421
Index ... 448
About the Author ... 449
About the author
Ellwood Wiggins is an assistant professor of German at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Summary
Odysseys of Recognition claims that interpersonal recognition is constituted by performance, and brings performance theory into dialogue with poetics, politics, and philosophy. By observing Odysseus figures from Homer to Kleist, Ellwood Wiggins offers an alternative to conventional intellectual histories that situate the invention of the interior self in modernity.
