The City in the Distance

Jean-Luc Nancy (Author) Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Universite de Strasbourg and one of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century's foremost thinkers of politics, art, and the body. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence. His book The Intruder was adapted into an acclaimed film by Claire Denis. Jean-Christophe Bailly (Foreword By) Jean-Christophe Bailly teaches at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Nature et du Paysage, in Blois, France. His books include The Animal Side and The Instant and Its Shadow, as well as many other books and artists' catalogs in French. Cory Stockwell (Translator) Cory Stockwell is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His translations include books by Mariette Navarro and Pascal Bruckner.

Foreword: The City beyond the Place vii Jean-Christophe Bailly Preface: The Uncivil City xi The City in the Distance 1 First Part (1987): In the Distance . . . Los Angeles 3 Second Part (1999): The City in the Distance 16 Images of the City 36 Traffic/Click 60 The Two Futures of the City 82 An Art of the City 90 Rumoration 111 Moments of the City 114 Acknowledgments 119 Notes 121

Nancy's little book helps us dispel the notion that there is a primordial stability of home to be defended against the disruptions of migration. For Nancy, the life of the city exemplifies the mobility or 'passing by' that is characteristic of 'being with' as an ontological condition.---Rafael Sanchez, Graduate Institute of Geneva Written in a tone that is always poetic, at times even lyrical, The City in the Distance is thought-provoking and a pleasure to read. As a philosophical and writerly meditation, a research-creation of sorts, the book invests a place (here the city of Los Angeles) with words and language in order to make it produce its own space and time.---Verena Andermatt Conley, Harvard University