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Vincent van Gerven Oei deposited The Disturbing Object of Philology on Humanities Commons 8 years, 6 months ago
This essay investigates a certain disturbance that appears at the moment that philosophy is confronted with philological practices, as foreshadowed in Paul de Man’s seminal work on the ‘return to philology.’ This disturbance appears vividly in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics with the sudden appearance of the ‘nonsense word’ kzomil. Heidegger’s invented word suggests that philology is not immune to its own unsettling techniques, as is also evident in Gerald M. Browne’s study of the Old Nubian language. Ironically, we can characterize the object of philology more precisely by turning away from ancient texts and toward Nathaniel Mellors’s absurdist television series Ourhouse.