Portrait - (Lit Z) by Jean-Luc Nancy (Paperback)

About the Book

Suspended between likeness and strangeness, portraiture can identify an individual only at the moment of its advancement and withdrawal. Examining 36 portraits across two millennia, Nancy shows how, despite photograph's ubiquity, the forms of appearing that define the portrait continue to mark the bodies and representations that dominate our world.

Book Synopsis

Portraits, this book suggests, unlock the paradoxes of subjectivity. Nancy shows how the portrait, far from conveying a sitter's self-sameness, is suspended between proximity and distance, likeness and strangeness, representation and presentation, the faithful and the forceful. A portrait can identify an individual, but it can also express a more complex double movement of approach and withdrawal.

Portrait comprises two extended essays in close conversation, written a decade apart, in which Nancy considers the range of aspirations articulated by the portrait. Accompanied by three dozen illustrations, it also includes a new preface written for the English-language edition and a substantial introduction by Jeffrey Librett, which situates the work within a range religious, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic accounts of the subject.

Portrait is grounded in a bold and searching engagement with the traditions out of which our thinking about the subject has emerged. It is also a playful series of readings that draws on a wide range of portraits: from carvings on ancient drinking vessels to recent experimental or parodic pieces in which sitters are rendered in the 'media' of their own blood, germ culture, or DNA.

Photos are ubiquitous today, but Nancy argues that this in no way makes thinking about the portrait an idle pursuit. On the contrary, the forms of appearing (and disappearing) that mark portraits--old and new--can serve to renew our exploration of the human figure today. At stake is what Nancy calls "the very possibility of our being present."

This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

From the Back Cover

Winner, French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation.

"Jean-Luc Nancy's Portrait is a metapicture, a portrait of portraiture itself, in all its paradoxical duplicity. Self and non-self, subject and object, identity and difference, face and sur-face are all made to resonate in the incandescence of Nancy's prose. If the spaces of contemporary technical image-making are divided between the horizontality of landscape and the verticality of the portrait, this little book will make you stand on your head and look in the mirror in a radically new way."--W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago

Portraits, this book suggests, unlock the paradoxes of subjectivity. Nancy shows how the portrait, far from conveying a sitter's self-sameness, is suspended between proximity and distance, likeness and strangeness, representation and presentation, the faithful and the forceful. A portrait can identify an individual, but it can also express a more complex double movement of approach and withdrawal.

Portrait comprises two extended essays in close conversation, written a decade apart, in which Nancy considers the range of aspirations articulated by the portrait. Accompanied by three dozen illustrations, it also includes a new preface written for the English-language edition and a substantial introduction by Jeffrey Librett, which situates the work within a range religious, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic accounts of the subject.

Portrait is grounded in a bold and searching engagement with the traditions out of which our thinking about the subject has emerged. It is also a playful series of readings that draws on a wide range of portraits: from carvings on ancient drinking vessels to recent experimental or parodic pieces in which sitters are rendered in the 'media' of their own blood, germ culture, or DNA.

Photos are ubiquitous today, but Nancy argues that this in no way makes thinking about the portrait an idle pursuit. On the contrary, the forms of appearing (and disappearing) that mark portraits--old and new--can serve to renew our exploration of the human figure today. At stake is what Nancy calls "the very possibility of our being present."

Jean-Luc Nancy is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg. His wide-ranging thought is developed in many books, including Expectation: Philosophy, Literature; The Possibility of a World; and The Banality of Heidegger;.

Sarah Clift is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Studies at the University of King's College, Halifax. Simon Sparks has translated books by Jean-Luc Nancy and Paola Marrati.

Jeffrey S. Librett is Professor of German at the University of Oregon.

Review Quotes

Jean-Luc Nancy's Portrait is a metapicture, a portrait of portraiture itself, in all its paradoxical duplicity. Self and non-self, subject and object, identity and difference, face and sur-face are all made to resonate in the incandescence of Nancy's prose. If the spaces of contemporary technical image-making are divided between the horizontality of landscape and the verticality of the portrait, this little book will make you stand on your head and look in the mirror in a radically new way.---W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago

About the Author

Jean-Luc Nancy (Author)
Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2016) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including The Literary Absolute, Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Listening, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence.

Jeffrey S. Librett (Introducer)
Jeffrey S. Librett is Professor of German at the University of Oregon.

Sarah Clift (Translator)
Sarah Clift is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Studies at the University of King's College, Halifax.