Repetition Recurrence Returns

Repetition is constitutive of human life. Unlike simple recall, repetition is permeated by the past and the present and is oriented toward the future. This book investigates the significance of different forms of repetition in literature, culture, and society through studies of the function and importance of an array of repetitive phenomenon.

Repetition is constitutive of human life. Both the species and the individual develop through repetition. Unlike simple recall, repetition is permeated by the past and the present and is oriented toward the future. Repetition of central actions and events plays an important role in the lives of individuals and the life of society. It helps to create meaning and memory. Because repetition is a central aspect of human life, it plays a role in all social and cultural spheres. It is important for several branches of the humanities and social studies. This book presents studies of an array of repetitive phenomena and to show that repetition analysis is opening up a new field of study within single disciplines and interdisciplinary research. Recommended for scholars of literature, music, culture, and communication.

This book takes the concept of repetition beyond older anthropological debates over habit, structure, or cultural continuity and demonstrates its value in attempts to comprehend the temporal, spatial and ideological fields in which contemporary social scientists must operate. Repetition has an ambiguous value in human societies. It may contribute to desired social and cultural reproduction or, equally, represent experiences of being trapped in cycles of routine and stasis. In this book, six anthropologists demonstrate the capacity of repetition to open up fertile areas of comparative ethnographic and historical work. Focusing on religious case-studies drawn from around the world, contributors ask when and how repetition is observed by interlocutors or fieldworkers. In the process, they explore the ethical, political and experiential dimensions of repetition as it operates at numerous scales of activity, ranging from intimate ritual, to forms of religious dissent, to haunting forms of historical recurrence. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

Lays the groundwork for exhaustive study of the basic problem of music theory and aesthetics, the relationship between pattern and meaning, and provides a basis for the meaningful discussion of emotion and meaning in all art.

Christopher Fynsk offers a sustained critical reading of works written by Martin Heidegger in the period 1927-1947. His guiding concerns are Heidegger's notions of human finitude and difference, which Fynsk first addresses through an analysis of the role played by Mitsein in Being and Time. This analysis in turn affords a critical perspective on Heidegger's own interpretive encounters with Nietzsche and Holderlin. For the paperback, Fynsk has added a new chapter on the recent controversy surrounding Heidegger's politics. Polemical in style, it seeks to define what is at stake in "the Heidegger affair" and points to some of the questions for philosophy and politics raised by the new legibility of Heidegger's political engagements.