Publisher Description

Over the last five years, corporations and individuals have given more money, more often, to charitable organizations than ever before. What could possibly be the downside to inhabiting a golden age of gift-giving? That question lies at the heart of Timothy Campbell's account of contemporary giving and its social forms. In a milieu where gift-giving dominates, nearly everything given and received becomes the subject of a calculus-gifts from God, from benefactors, from those who have. Is there another way to conceive of generosity? What would giving and receiving without gifts look like?
A lucid and imaginative intervention in both European philosophy and film theory, The Techne of Giving investigates how we hold the objects of daily life-indeed, how we hold ourselves-in relation to neoliberal forms of gift-giving. Even as instrumentalism permeates giving, Campbell articulates a resistant techne locatable in forms of generosity that fail to coincide with biopower's assertion that the only gifts that count are those given and received. Moving between visual studies, Winnicottian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian biopower, and apparatus theory, Campbell makes a case for how to give and receive without giving gifts. In the conversation between political philosophy and classic Italian films by Visconti, Rossellini, and Antonioni, the potential emerges of a generous form of life that can cross between the visible and invisible, the fated and the free.

Author Biography

Timothy C. Campbell is a professor of Italian at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

1. Forms of Life in a Milieu of Biopower 2. Freeing the Apparatus 3. "Dead Weight": Visconti and Forms of Life 4. Playful Falls in a Milieu of Contagion 5. The Tender Lives of Vitti/Vittoria Conclusion: Attention, Not Autopsy Acknowledgments Notes Index

Review

"A very original, extremely well-researched piece of work that combines theoretical sophistication with depth of literary, cultural, and cinematic knowledge." -- -Rosi Braidotti Utrecht University

Prizes

Winner of American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize 2018

Long Description

Over the last five years, corporations and individuals have given more money, more often, to charitable organizations than ever before. What could possibly be the downside to inhabiting a golden age of gift-giving? That question lies at the heart of Timothy Campbell's account of contemporary giving and its social forms. In a milieu where gift-giving dominates, nearly everything given and received becomes the subject of a calculus--gifts from God, from benefactors, from those who have. Is there another way to conceive of generosity? What would giving and receiving without gifts look like? A lucid and imaginative intervention in both European philosophy and film theory, The Techne of Giving investigates how we hold the objects of daily life--indeed, how we hold ourselves--in relation to neoliberal forms of gift-giving. Even as instrumentalism permeates giving, Campbell articulates a resistant techne locatable in forms of generosity that fail to coincide with biopower's assertion that the only gifts that count are those given and received. Moving between visual studies, Winnicottian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian biopower, and apparatus theory, Campbell makes a case for how to give and receive without giving gifts. In the conversation between political philosophy and classic Italian films by Visconti, Rossellini, and Antonioni, the potential emerges of a generous form of life that can cross between the visible and invisible, the fated and the free.

Review Text

"A very original, extremely well-researched piece of work that combines theoretical sophistication with depth of literary, cultural, and cinematic knowledge." --Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University

Review Quote

"A very original, extremely well-researched piece of work that combines theoretical sophistication with depth of literary, cultural, and cinematic knowledge."-Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University "Timothy Campbell offers a philosophical meditation on Italian cinema that is like nothing else in film studies or Italian studies. Campbell gently compels us to see how film models a mode of comportment toward the world that is nonpossessive, tentative, and open to discovery. In his exquisite handling of films by Visconti, Rossellini, and Antonioni, Campbell nudges us toward a vision of cinema's redemptively expropriating gestures."-John David Rhodes, University of Cambridge

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