# Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons - Hardcover

by **Daniel Heller-Roazen** (Author)

**An intellectually adventurous account of the role of nonpersons that explores their depiction in literature and challenges how they are defined in philosophy, law, and anthropology**

In thirteen interlocking chapters, _Absentees_ explores the role of the missing in human communities, asking an urgent question: How does a person become a nonperson, whether by disappearance, disenfranchisement, or civil, social, or biological death? Only somebody can become a "nobody," but, as Daniel Heller-Roazen shows, the ways of being a nonperson are as diverse and complex as they are mysterious and unpredictable. Heller-Roazen treats the variously missing persons of the subtitle in three parts: Vanishings, Lessenings, and Survivals. In each section and with multiple transhistorical and transcultural examples, he challenges the categories that define nonpersons in philosophy, ethics, law, and anthropology. Exclusion, infamy, and stigma; mortuary beliefs and customs; children's games and state censuses; ghosts and "dead souls" illustrate the lives of those lacking or denied full personhood. In the archives of fiction, Heller-Roazen uncovers figurations of the missing--from Helen of Argos in Troy or Egypt to Hawthorne's Wakefield, Swift's Captain Gulliver, Kafka's undead hunter Gracchus, and Chamisso's long-lived shadowless Peter Schlemihl. Readers of _The Enemy of All_ and _No One's Ways_ will find a continuation of those books' intense intellectual adventures, with unexpected questions and arguments arising every step of the way. In a unique voice, Heller-Roazen's thought and writing capture the intricacies of the all-too-human absent and absented.

### Author Biography

**Daniel Heller-Roazen** is the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature and the Council of Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, of _No One's Ways: An Essay on Infinite Naming_, _Dark Tongues: The Art of Rogues and Riddlers_, and _The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World_.

**Number of Pages:** 320

**Dimensions:** 1.2 x 9.1 x 6.2 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** March 23, 2021

## Details

- **Price:** 39.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 39.95 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons - Hardcover

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