Coming by Jean-Luc Nancy is a lyrical, erudite examination of the French notion of jouissance. How did jouissance evolve from referring to the pleasure of possessing a material thing (property, wealth) to the pleasure of orgasm, from appropriation to dis-appropriation, from consumption to consummation? The philosophers Adele van Reeth and Jean-Luc Nancy engage in a lively dialogue touching on authors as varied as Spinoza, Hegel, Saint Augustine, the Marquis de Sade, Marguerite Duras, and Henry Miller, and on subjects ranging from consumerism to video games to mysticism. Four additional essays were added to the American edition: "The Body of Pleasure," a philosophical examination of the body and the senses; "Ruhren, Beruhren, Aufruhr (Moving, Touching, Uprising)," on the nature of touch; "Neither Seeing Nor Having," an essay on the philosopher Gerard Granel's meditations on the obsessive love of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V of Dante's Inferno; and finally a lyrical and evocative prose-poem called "Nude Enumerated."
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