In his far-ranging reflections Vogl shows that the traditional insistence on the exclusivity of these terms impoverishes and distorts the range of human responses to a world full of possibilities. His readings of texts by Freud, Sophocles, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka provide rich examples of how to resist the binary of activity and passivity through tarrying. This important book offers the first-ever extended analysis of tarrying as a mode of subversion and presents provocative new readings and interpretations of significant works of German literature and thought.