Corpus III: Cruor and Other Writings

Jean-Luc Nancy's final work, Corpus III, is a profound series of reflections on the body that explores its pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale. The book brings together Nancy's rigorous erudition, rich poetic language, and an actual poem, opening the body onto its own unaccountable origins, plural singularities, enmeshed instantiations, and excessive irreducibles. It is crucial for bringing into English Cruor, the very last book Nancy completed before his death, an evocative meditation on the complex conditions of his own and our singular survival.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 17 January 2023
Publisher: Fordham University Press

Jean-Luc Nancy's last completed work, "The Body: An Essay," is a profound series of reflections on the body that concludes his remarkable philosophical journey. Taking the body as an intersection of pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale, Nancy's account becomes more vivid and physical than ever, even as it ventures into language that is as lyrical as it is profound. This vividness is manifest in blood, as it flows and spills in the cruelty of existences confronted daily by countless destructions. Nancy's distinction between sanguis and cruor allows him to highlight an almost mystical sense of the body alongside the cruelty that pervades our world, a world whose very existence is threatened by its reduction to mere objects. The exceptional writings brought together in Corpus III comprise a masterful work of philosophy that marries rigorous erudition with rich poetic language and an actual poem. Nancy's thought opens the body onto its own unaccountable origins, its plural singularities, its enmeshed instantiations, and its excessive irreducibles, which are also the elusive excesses of language. Whereas in earlier texts Nancy has referred to this excess as poetry, here he performs it in the form of a poem, in the extraordinary hymn entitled "Stoma." While the publication of a poem by Nancy is a notable event, equally noteworthy is a remarkable essay titled "The Body: An Essay."

Weight: 232g
Dimension: 151 x 229 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781531501129