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Life After Literature pp 163–177Cite as

‘Step by Step into Ever Greater Decadence’: Discourses of Life and Metamorphic Anthropology

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Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 12))

Abstract

The anthropological crisis of modernity, as thematized through discourses relating to the philosophy of life, collapses into the mutual groundlessness of life and man. This circumstance affords a truly radical critique that exposes the schizoid character of modernity, whose purification procedures—exemplified by discourses of degeneration/decadence—unleash ever more complex forms of hybridization. The posthuman perspective necessitates this hybridity, for it seeks to explore Life within the living, the zoe at work within all bios, so as to show the productive, form-manufacturing character of baselessness and emptiness. In this context, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s A letter (Ein Brief, 1902) can be interpreted as a textual artifact of the humanist ideology’s final farewell.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Márió Z. Nemes

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  1. Márió Z. Nemes
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Correspondence to Márió Z. Nemes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó

  2. Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Tamás Lénárt

  3. Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Attila Simon

  4. Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Roland Végső

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Nemes, M.Z. (2020). ‘Step by Step into Ever Greater Decadence’: Discourses of Life and Metamorphic Anthropology. In: Kulcsár-Szabó, Z., Lénárt, T., Simon, A., Végső, R. (eds) Life After Literature. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33738-4_11

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