LANGUAGE PANGS C

We usually think about language and pain as opposites: the one is about expression and communication, the other very private, unspeakable and isolating. Language Pangs challenges these familiar conceptions and proposes a reconsideration of the relationship between pain and language in terms of an essential interconnectedness, rather than the common exclusive opposition. Language Pangs brings together discussions of philosophical as well as literary texts focusing on the relationship between pain and language. It provides close readings of Johann Gottfried Herder's Treatise on the Origin of Language, Martin Heidegger's seminar on Herder's text about language, and Sophocles' play, "Philoctetes."

Ilit Ferber is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of three books on the philosophy of moods and on the language of lament. She has published numerous articles on Leibniz, Herder, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Scholem, and Améry.

- Chapter 1. On Pain and the Origin of Language
- Chapter 2. A Language of Pain: Herder and the Origin of Language
- Chapter 3. Language and Attention: Herder on Besonnenheit
- Chapter 4. Language and Hearing: Heidegger's Herder
- Chapter 5. Pain, Expression and Sympathy: Philoctetes
- Chapter 6. Language Pangs