Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey

by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Production of Presence is a comprehensive version of the thinking of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one of the most consistently original literary scholars writing today. It offers a personalized account of some of the central theoretical movements in literary studies and in the humanities over the past thirty years, together with an equally personal view of a possible future. Based on this assessment of the past and the future of literary studies and the humanities, the book develops the provocative thesis that, through their exclusive dedication to interpretation, i.e. to the reconstruction and attribution of meaning, the humanities have become incapable of addressing a dimension in all cultural phenomena that is as important as the dimension of meaning. Interpretation alone cannot do justice to the dimension of "presence," a dimension in which cultural phenomena and cultural events become tangible and have an impact on our senses and our bodies. Production of Presence is a passionate plea for a rethinking and a reshaping of the intellectual practice within the humanities.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Humanities, Art, Literary Criticism, Academic

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature and of French & Italian (and by courtesy, he is affiliated with the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures/ILAC, the Department of German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature). As a scholar, Gumbrecht focuses on the histories of the national literatures in Romance language (especially French, Spanish, and Brazilian), but also on German literature, while, at the same time, he teaches and writes about the western philosophical tradition (almost exclusively on non-analytic philosophy) with an emphasis on French and German nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. In addition, Gumbrecht tries to analyze and to understand forms of aesthetic experience 21st-century everyday culture. Over the past forty years, he has published more than two thousand texts, including books, translated into more than twenty languages. In Europe and in South America, Gumbrecht has a presence as a public intellectual; whereas, in the academic world, he has been acknowledged by ten honorary doctorates in seven different countries: Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Russia, and Georgia. He has also held a large number of visiting professorships, at the Collège de France, University of Lisbon, University of Manchester, and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, among others. In the spring of 2017, he was a Martin Buber Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Reviews

[Emm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm ambivalent about Gumbrecht. I think the chapter entitled "Beyond Meaning..." is wonderful and his illusion that power is more sinister than physical violence is politically and theoretically fruitful. But herein lies the most frustrating thing about this book: G. resists and negates the political implications of his work! The rest of the book reads as sentimental wallowing. It feels as if Gumbrecht has fallen prey to impulse male scholars have to "feminize" themselves and their disciplines, bemoaning their positions of entitlement and power for not being edgy enough. (See Braidotti's "Nomadic Subjects" for more on this comment.)

The long and short of it: At times, Gumbrecht reads as a baby. But Ch 3 is worth a read.

[matthew harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grumbrecht takes you through his own intellectual development--his embracing and then movement away from meaning production (hermeneutics) and his movement towards a more holistic model that engages with and privileges what Gumbrecht calls "aesthetic experience" or epiphany, or presence. I enjoyed the opening segment where he laid out his own intellectual journey and I really appreciated the synopsis on the development of the hermeneutically-based epistemology that rules in the humanities, but I was totally fist-pumping inside my head as I read the second to the last chapter where he explains how this marriage of meaning and presence functions pedagogically. The reading I did was fairly careful as the writing was careful --I need to read this book again and again--and while it may seem that Gumbrecht is contributing very little to the academic conversation on the futility (or impossibility) of meaning production, what he did say seemed at first like a feather, but later hit me like a ten ton weight

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taking a step back from his "Farewell to interpretation" stance, this is a fascinating exploration (in part via Heidegger) of what the dominance of Cartesian intellectual orientations may exclude from the analysis of cultural phenomena. A central trope is the tension/oscillation between 'presence effects' and 'meaning effects' in place of the divide sometimes glossed as the veil of perception. Gumbrecht calls for the generation of concepts that would "allow us to point to what is irreversibly nonconceptual in our lives" and makes a case for three of his own: epiphany, presentification, and deixis. As an ethnographer engaged with what Gumbrecht calls presence effects I found some of his assertions at once overly cautious and ethereal. Gumbrecht doesn't distinguish between different orders of publics, a move that helps articulate how the different materialities of media matter, for example between a reading public and a listening public occupying shared space. The intersubjective and the performative are in general impoverished in his work which leads him to characterize the relation between presence and meaning as volatile rather than often stabilized in practice, for example through ritual (a concept he often invokes) and the other ways that publics constituted through co-presence dampen such volatility through repetitive associations. My objections, while more than cavils, do not detract from my overall enthusiasm for this beautifully written and richly generative work.

[Rodrigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Não é fácil ser um materialista. Gumbrecht busca encontrar caminhos para superar a ausência de sentido pós-morte de Deus por meio do que chama de epifania (como experiência estética), presentificação (de mundos passados) e dêixis (ensino desapegado de orientações éticas): “Acredito que, na sua convergência, as movimentações para dar mais destaque ao elemento da presença na experiência estética, a esteticização potencial da história e a proposta de libertar o nosso ensino da obrigação de oferecer orientação ética podem criar, mais uma vez, maior consciência da proximidade que a prática artística concreta pode ter relativamente às nossas atividades acadêmicas”.

Curiosamente, a busca por uma alternativa o direciona a um eventual misticismo, mostrando que a coisa é ainda mais difícil do que se pode pensar.

Foi interessante conhecer seu ponto de vista, ainda que esse tipo de escrita contenha uma mistura quase que infinita de conceitos e significados em poucas páginas, tornando a compreensão integral do conteúdo uma irônica utopia.

[Whitney Borup · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book seems to summarize my own academic career so far. Presence culture: Brigham Young University, Meaning culture: San Francisco State University, a nice combination of both, at times: University of Utah.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to idolize this man. The way he talked about hermeneutics sounded like magic to me. Then I realized that the Heideggerean bag of tricks only works when you don't really care about semantics. Unfortunately, I do. Sorry Wittgenstein.

His account of his intellectual trajectory is a useful review of debates in the late 20th century. He is often very funny. He is a bit cavalier about force.

What frustrated me about this book was that it stopped right when the story got interesting. Redemption: great! But why must everything be finite?

[m. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Монументальна робота, проте написана доволі доступно (Враховуючи, наскільки доступно взагалі можна писати філософські праці, хе-хе)

P.S. Для повноцінного розуміння книги бажано знати й англійську мову (й в деяких моментах – німецьку), адже у тексті достатньо відсилок й вставок саме англійських слів/виразів, так як не завжди конотація українського відповідника передає повноцінно той сенс, що закладав автор.

UPD: Вирішив перечитати вдруге, зрозумів менше, ніж вперше.

[aglae · Rating 2 out of 5]

интеллектуальный снобистский эксгибиционизм человека, внезапно открывшего реальный мир за пределами академии (прошу прощения за грубость, я всю книгу исчеркала недоумением и несогласием)

зато написано красиво и есть любопытные мысли.

[Cheshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Витончено-стислий виклад, концепти зафіксовані максимально зневоднено. Нагадує каркас інтелектуального лабіринту. Дихотомія значення присутності - натягнута. Дуже специфічне читання з не надто очевидною метою (окрім випадків, якщо ви пишете про це наукову роботу).

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I often speculate to myself that the purpose of most contemporary philosophy is to redress damage done by earlier philosophizing. That seems to be the case with this book. As the subtitle suggests, Gumbrecht addresses the shortcomings of our Cartesian legacy, which is obsessed with meaning and hermeneutics. This book is an early attempt to start a discussion of how theorists might talk about the presence of something, that part of it's being that exists beyond or before it is interpreted. His arguments are nuanced and engaging (if sometimes discouragingly dense), not to mention philosophically refreshing, but there are times when, despite all the nuance and complexity, the general thrust of his argument seems merely to be taking baby steps on a path long ago blazed by mystics and theologians, who deal with incarnation and silence. To his credit, Gumbrecht admits, toward the end of the book, that his thinking has much in common with certain religious thought and he even interacts with a recent theological movement known as radical orthodoxy and tentatively with some Buddhist principles. Overall, I recognize much value in Gumbrecht's arguments (in part because the religious wisdom toward which his thinking is moving will be better received in the academy if put forth by a secular mind) and I foresee myself referring back to this work in future scholarly discussions of art.

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Livro instigante, mas creio que a proposta de Gumbrecht não se vende muito bem.
A idéia de presença, por sua vez, pode ser aplicada com eficácia para pensar as viagens à Itália de Herder, Goethe e Burckhardt.

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, audacious, and clearly written. The book suggests that thinking since Descartes has left us unable to deal with things that may be uninterpretable--for examples, various experiences of presence, which (he writes) press on or affect the body in various ways.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflections by an old man (pictured on cover) on the limitations of language. Smart book but I disagreed with his thesis.

[EvaLovesYA · Rating 3 out of 5]

En rigtig god kilde ifb. med et semesterfag på engelskstudiet.

- Brugt på universitetet (engelsk)

[Breno Filo · Rating 5 out of 5]

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