FINALIST, 38th ANNUAL FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE Exploring the ever-changing philosophy of city life with Jean-Luc Nancy In The City in the Distance, Jean-Luc Nancy embarks on nothing less than a philosophy of the city. Drawing on his widely discussed accounts of sense and of the fraught question of community, Nancy views the city as the site of a disposition that is constantly undergoing metamorphoses. Far from an abstract account, Nancy attends in the most concrete way possible to the workings of a city not typically taken as paradigmatic, Los Angeles. As Jean-Christophe Bailly suggests in his foreword, Nancy joins Walter Benjamin in thinking the city not from an external vantage point, but on its own terms.
Nancy’s book offers nothing less than a philosophy of the city. Drawing on his widely discussed accounts of sense and of the fraught question of community, Nancy views the city as the site of a disposition that is constantly undergoing metamorphoses.
