1 German Culture News Cornell University Institute for German Cultural Studies Fall 2014 Vol XXIII

IN THIS ISSUE: Critical Theory and March 15, 2014 IGCS Workshop: (post)Colonialism Critical Theory and In a daylong work- theories concep- (post)Colonialism shop co-organized Hohendahl; these were brought tualize justice and by Paul Fleming and Natalie into contact with works by prom- injustice, as well consideration Word from the Director Melas on behalf of The Institute inent thinkers of global capital- as to whether or not justice as a for German Cultural Studies and ism and proponents of postco- universal criterion is fundamen- IGCS Workshop on The Institute for Comparative lonial critique and theory on the tally at odds with postcolonial Herbert Marcuse: Modernities (Cornell Univer- other hand, such as Aimé Cés- accounts of global inequality. Radical Politics, Critical sity), presenters and participants aire, Franz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Pensky interrogated the notion Aesthetics, Queer Pleasure examined conspicuous absences Dipesh Chakrabarty, Enrique of justice as a universal cat- in Critical Theory and its devel- Dussel, and Roberto Schwarz. egory by referring to Theodor IGCS Symposium: opment, with regard to colonial Representative publications from Adorno’s writings on historical New Directions in Interdis- modernity and capitalism in workshop presenters were also progress and social justice in ciplinary German Studies regions outside of Europe and included in the reading selection. fundamentally dialectical terms. North America. Likewise, atten- Retrospective: tion was drawn to unexplored Max Pensky (SUNY Bingham- Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 affi nities between the respective ton) opened the discussion by (Rutgers University) continued Colloquium Series discourses of Critical Theory and outlining his current project, the discussion by arguing for a re- postcolonial critique and theory. which aims to bring global jus- evaluation of canonical accounts Hohendahl Graduate Essay tice theory into contact with of the Enlightenment as a develop- Prize in Critical Theory

Radical Thought on the Margin II Conference

Lectures and Events

Incoming Guests of IGCS

Posters of this Semester’s Conferences

The workshop format consisted postcolonial theories. He intro- ment in European thought alone. of short presentations, followed He proposed the concept of plural German Culture News duced global justice theory as a by extensive discussion of ideas branch of political philosophy enlightenment, which repositions Cornell University IGCS and questions raised both during that seeks to account for distribu- intellectual developments of the 726 University Avenue the workshop and in texts and tive inequality on a global scale. seventeenth and eighteenth cen- Ithaca, NY 14850 publications circulated among According to Pensky, postco- turies into a global confi guration. phone: 607-255-8408 participants prior to the event. lonial theory could offer an ex- Philosophical writings of this pe- email: [email protected] Advance readings included works planatory tool for the roots of riod circulated in regions often by scholars and theorists affi li- global maldistribution of justice. considered to be off of the En- Paul Fleming: Director ated with the Frankfurt School lightenment map, despite the fact Olga Petrova: Editor and Neo-Marxist social theory on Forging common ground between that translations and printed cop- Miyako Hayakawa:Copy Editor the one hand, notably Theodor W. these theoretical frameworks ies of infl uential texts were dis- Hannah Mueller: Photographer Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Wal- would involve an investigation tributed in non-European areas. & Student Coordinator ter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Zyg- into ways in which postcolonial continue on page 3 munt Bauman, and Peter Uwe Word from the Director

It has been a rewarding and productive fi rst University of Colorado-Boulder and Dame), Russell Berman (Stanford), Carsten year at the helm of the Institute for German Johns Hopkins University for advanced Strathausen (Missouri), Elke Siegel, Peter Cultural Studies, with many exciting events graduate students in German to workshop Uwe Hohendahl, and Paul Fleming (all and several new programs to report – and dissertation chapters with professors and Cornell) much more to come in 2014-15. In addition graduate students at our partner schools. to the colloquia, workshops, conferences, We were very happy to support the travel of Oct. 17-18, Conference “Antisocialism: concerts, and fi lms documented in this issue four of our graduate students to Boulder for The Age of Riots” Organized by the Depart- of German Culture News and on the IGCS 2 days of intellectual exchange: Johannes ment of Comparative Literature website, I would also like to highlight the Wankhammer, Hannah Mueller, Alexander following news from the 2013-14: Phillips, and Katrina Nousek. Oct. 24, IGCS Colloquium, “Seeing the Invisible: Contagion and Hygiene in 19th The IGCS is excited to announce our Please mark your calendars for the up- Century German Popular Media” (Christiane new graduate student exchange with the coming Fall 2014 IGCS sponsored events Arndt, Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Cologne, starting this fall – for more information and up-to-the- Queen’s University) 2014. Our exchange partner is Cologne minute reports, please visit the IGCS University’s Humanities graduate school, website (igcs.cornell.edu): Oct. 31-Nov. 1, Sage School of Philosophy, a.r.t.e.s. (part of Cologne University being 218 Goldwin Smith Hall awarded an “Exzellenz” status among Ger- Sept. 5, IGCS Colloquium, “Fabelhafte Conference in Honor of Allen W. Wood man universities). Applications for the new Macht: Louis Marin Liest Jean de la Fon- “German Philosophy & the Ethics of exchange are open to all Humanities gradu- taine” (Ethel Matala de Mazza, Institut für Belief.” Organized by Andrew Chignell, ate students with a knowledge of German deutsche Literatur, Humboldt-Universität zu Cornell University; Lara Denis, Agnes who could benefi t from a semester or a year Berlin) Scott College; Desmond Hogan, Princeton researching in Cologne. As part of the ex- University change, Cornell students receive 1,000 euros Sept. 12, 3pm, A.D. White House per month for up to 10 months: every year Lecture “Inheritance Trouble: Migra- Nov. 7, IGCS Colloquium, “Shylock’s we can send either one 1 graduate student tion, Memory, and the German Past” Daughters: Philosemitism, 19th Century for the full 10 months, or 2 graduate students with speakers Michael Rothberg (English, Melodrama, and the Liberal Imagination” for 5 months each (it can be the same se- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) (Jonathan M. Hess, Germanic Languages mester). If you are a graduate student in the and Yasemin Yildiz (Germanic Languages and Literatures, UNC at Chapel Hill) *co- Humanities, know German, and would like and Literatures, University of Illinois at sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program to apply to this program for 2015-16, please Urbana-Champaign) be in touch with IGCS. Congratulations to Nov. 19 Time and place TBA Matteo Calla, PhD candidate in German, for Sept. 13, 12:15pm, 236 Goldwin Smith Hall Lecture “Turkish Nationalism and Ger- being awarded the fi rst stipend to Cologne Luncheon and Seminar with speakers man Colonialism: A Joint Venture during for 2014-15. Michael Rothberg (English, University of WWI” (Malte Fuhrmann, Orient-Institut [for more information on a.r.t.e.s., please Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Yas- Istanbul) visit: http://artes.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/] emin Yildiz (Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois at Urbana- Nov. 21, IGCS Colloquium, “Figment, Fic- Congratulations to Alina Dvorovenko, CAS Champaign tion, Fabrication: Artifi ce and Evidence in undergraduate major in Economics, for Org. by German Studies graduate students J.J. Breitinger’s Poetics” (Johannes Wank- being awarded a full tuition and accom- hammer, German Studies, Cornell Univer- modation scholarship to the six-week Sept. 16, 9:30am – 5pm, 258 Goldwin sity) “Cologne Summer School on Legal Aspects Smith Hall of European Integration 2014.” Conference: “Derrida’s Jewish Specters” Dec. 6 Time and place TBA Organized by Jonathan Boyarin, Jewish Critical Theory and (post)Colonialism IGCS is also very happy to sponsor a new Studies Program Part II Contemporary German Literature Read- Speakers include: Martin Land (Jerusalem), A joint workshop with ICM ing Group dedicated to the discussion of Sarah Hammerschlag (Chicago), Michael the most recent works of German literature Levine (Rutgers), Sergei Dolgopolski (Buf- Please take the time to read the German (texts appearing in the last 5-10 years). We falo), Culture News (in its ‘new’ retro layout) and meet several times throughout the term at browse the IGCS website (igcs.cornell.edu) IGCS; last semester we read work by Rain- Sept. 26-27, A.D. White House for all that is taking place this year. The ald Goetz, Ann Cotton, and Maxim Biller. If Conference: “The Poet and the University: IGCS is eager to partner in exciting, multi- you are interested in participating, please be Stefan George among the Scholars” disciplinary events; if you have ideas or sug- in touch with IGCS. Organized by Peter Uwe Hohendahl and gestions, please feel free to contact me. Paul Fleming Last year, IGCS together with the Ger- With talks by Eva Geulen (Frankfurt am --Paul Fleming man Department, inaugurated a new, Main), Ernst Osterkamp (Humboldt Uni- yearly graduate student forum with the versity-Berlin), Robert Norton (Notre 3 continued from page 1 Vazquez-Arroyo argued that to root Enlight- porating various staples of the Western fi lm Adorno and James: Might it have changed enment developments in the narrow context genre. By transporting these real histories the New Left’s blindness to anti-colonial of Northern European intellectual history is to into a Western genre as well as persistently struggles? Might it have led to a better un- misconstrue what is, in fact, a plural enlight- making visible means of production such as derstanding of the ambiguities of develop- enment as singular and to disregard how en- stages, costumes, fake blood, and recording ment in the aftermath of anti-colonial revolu- lightenment ideas formed in multiple settings devices, the fi lm produces the uncanny effect tions? In the discussion, Susan Buck-Morss and in contact with non-European intellectual of making present and documenting histori- recognized such counter-factual questioning cultures. Vazquez-Arroyo developed his the- cal trauma in a format that consciously ar- as a form of Eingedenken, and consequently sis further by consulting different postcolonial ticulates itself as artifi ce. (Christine Schott) as a demand to redeem a missed possibil- responses to the universal as a philosophical ity by staging a dialogue in the present. category. He presented C. L. R. James’ notion Susan Buck-Morss (CUNY Graduate Cen- of a ‘concrete universal,’ as well as Aimé Cé- ter) opened the afternoon session with refl ec- The fi nal presenter and co-organizer of the saire’s conceptualization of the universal as tions on how to write history in a way that workshop Natalie Melas (Cornell Uni- arising from singularity, as points of entry into translates into contemporary practice. Her versity) turned to Ernst Bloch and C. L. R. possible re-confi gurations of Enlightenment presentation revolved around two fi gures James for models of critical non-contempo- thought and its legacy in postcolonial theory. of thought inspired by Walter Benjamin: raneity that upset linear narratives and devel- A remembering of the past that is the com- opmentalist models of historical time. Both Jennifer Wenzel (University of Michigan) munal responsibility of a “generation” (all thinkers challenge homogenous notions of fi rst gave a short overview of her previous human beings alive today) rather than the contemporaneity by insisting on the currency scholarly work, in which she examined theo- prerogative of particular groups with exclu- of remnants of bygone eras (Bloch) and of ries of temporality in relation to revolution sive claims to their own pasts; and a mode of uncompleted pasts awaiting their future re- and failure in a postcolonial context. Western such remembering conceived along the lines alization (James). Against retroactively ap- analytic tools for conceptualizing temporality of Benjamin’s Eingedenken – an interruptive propriating anti-colonial writings for today’s and revolution, so Wenzel, cannot suffi ciently commemoration that reopens past possibility postcolonial theory, Melas suggested that account for the temporal continuation of rev- and calls for its redemption in the present. anti-colonial texts might unfold their con- olutionary thought after failed revolutions. temporary potential precisely in their irreduc- Wenzel then introduced her new book project, The ensuing discussion raised, among others, ible non-contemporaneity. She also noted the which investigates crises of futurity as articu- questions as to whether or not it is possible productive tension between fi gures of non- lated in contemporary ecocritical discourse. to separate historical memory from particu- contemporaneity and the notion of a present lar ethnic, national and social groups in the “generation” as proposed by Susan Buck- Eco-discourses of today envision the future manner that Buck-Morss envisions, without Morss, asking if such a generation could as one of impending apocalypse, and evoke sacrifi cing the affective and transformative not be conceived of in a way that leaves such a future in terms of the West’s ultimate potential associated with such memory, and room for disjunctive experiences of time. decline and collapse; yet global warming as to whether or not the concept of genera- is understood to be a global phenomenon, tion suffi ciently takes into account differ- The concluding discussion opened up a range and becomes concrete and visible to the ences in positionality determined by rela- of considerations that suggested ample ma- West fi rst by means of catastrophic events tions of power and geographical location. terial for a continuing conversation. Par- in non-Western regions. In relation to these ticipants questioned the nature of Critical tensions, Wenzel explored “waste,” particu- Next, Enzo Traverso (Cornell Univer- Theory’s omission of colonialism as acciden- larly in a spatial register (e.g., the notion sity) reconstructed reasons for the lack of tal, contingent, or even perhaps necessary, of “wasteland”), as a phenomenon that can dialogue between Theodor Adorno and C. while also refl ecting upon lines of distinction help to write reversed histories of progress. L. R. James, who met during Adorno’s ex- drawn in the face of the fact that pioneering ile in New York but who failed to seriously fi gures of anti-colonial activism and Critical Zahid Chaudhary (Princeton University) of- engage each other’s work. Despite notable Theory such as W. E. B. DuBois and Max fered a reading of Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 affi nities in their diagnoses of Western mo- Weber are known to have infl uenced each documentary The Act of Killing, informed by dernity, Adorno and James ultimately de- other. Attention was also drawn to the works Walter Benjamin’s conception of magic. Ben- velop different concepts of negative univer- of third generation Critical Theorists Alexan- jamin’s notion of the magical ‘here and now’ sal history: While Adorno focuses on the der Kluge and Oskar Negt, which might pro- that produces an acute presence and non-ex- progressive domination of nature from the vide further interlocution with postcolonial changeable particularity speaks to the way in contemplative perspective of an intellectual critique and theory. (Johannes Wankhammer) which the fi lm negotiates the historical fac- in the Hegelian tradition, James foregrounds ticity of mass murder in the medium of fi lm. confl ict and struggle and insists on the pos- sibility of emancipatory political practice. The fi lm reenacts the 1965-1966 anti-com- munist surge and resulting death squads in Suggesting that the missed dialogue result- Indonesia, and recruits perpetrators and sol- ed from a colonial unconscious of classical diers who actively participated in the killings Critical Theory, as evidenced by the lack of as actors who narrate and reenact execu- references to colonialism in central works tions before the camera. Former perpetra- of this tradition, Traverso concluded by ask- tors perform violent acts of killing in the ing what might have happened if there had recording studio on dolls, while also incor- in fact been a fruitful encounter between Radical Politics, Critical Aesthetics, Queer Pleasure: A Workshop on Herbert Marcuse

April 26, 2014 grounds for intolerance, however, is an on- lief in either absolute or contingent truth that going project integral to deliberative reason. must be continuously reevaluated, cognizant In a one-day workshop co-organized by of the tension between philosophical dis- Paul Fleming (Cornell University) and Ul- In making these claims, Marcuse posits that course and the execution of political action. rich Plass (Wesleyan University) and spon- true tolerance is not the relation between sored by the Institute for German Cultural freedom and opinion, but rather between Next, in a presentation titled “Errors of Studies at Cornell and The Center for the freedom and rationality—intolerance must Form: Adorno and Marcuse on the Dialec- Humanities and The Certifi cate Program be exercised in the name of reason, libera- tics of Praxis,” Matthew Garrett (Wes- in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at tion, and democracy. Therefore, one reach- leyan University) discussed the famous Wesleyan University, presenters and par- es an impasse when democratic structures letter exchange between Marcuse and The- ticipants considered the infl uence of the come to serve the purpose of repression. odor W. Adorno in the year 1969 regard- philosopher, social critic, and New Left ing the German student protest movement. activist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Fleming proposed that the question as to who Garrett’s account of the “embarrassingly” decides the “minimum rational demand” of personal nature of the correspondence con- Despite the highly controversial public pro- that which is to be tolerated remains to be re- sidered their respective positions regard- fi le of the scholar during his lifetime, thirty- solved, as education and knowledge are only ing the theory-praxis divide as expressed in fi ve years after his death his work is not as part of the answer. In the discussion that fol- their stance towards student demonstrations. often taken into consideration in discourses lowed, historically predominant conceptions on radical political thought and action. In of progress, historical contingency, and the The debate was prompted by the occupation opening remarks from the co-orga- of a room in the Institute for Social nizers, Paul Fleming observed that Research at the University of Frank- Marcuse’s legacy has become “dis- furt, led by SDS (Sozialistischer concertingly uncontroversial” and is Deutscher Studentenbund) members considered, on the one hand, to lack and the activist Hans-Jürgen Krahl, the philosophical rigor of ‘high’ criti- in response to which Adorno called cal theory and, on the other, to be too in the police, much to Marcuse’s dis- complex to inform political practice. appointment. The letters between the Similarly, Ulrich Plass emphasized two friends express their disagree- the disciplinary stakes for Marcuse’s ment concerning academics’ roles in work along the theory-praxis divide. support or opposition of such radical manifestations of protest. However, The co-organizers thus articulated the their dialogue ranges broadly with re- aim of the workshop: to situate Mar- spect to subjective or objective limi- cuse in current discourses both in crit- tations and the possibility of personal ical theory and in radical practice, and engagement in radical political action. to provide a forum for workshop par- ticipants to defi ne personal and profes- In the discussion, attention was drawn sional stakes of Marcuse’s work on their to the historical context of the corre- own terms. Additionally, one of Marcuse’s possibility of an absolute truth were taken spondence in light of populist movements in most renowned former students, the scholar into consideration with regards to both Mar- Germany, including on the one hand resistance and social activist Angela Davis was engaged cuse’s thought and the work of other scholars to activism that is not informed by theory and, as a respondent for the morning session. affi liated with Frankfurt School social theory. on the other, the high degree of intellectual training of student activists. Based on personal Paul Fleming opened the morning session Angela Davis contributed observations from acquaintance, Davis confi rmed the degree to of the workshop, “Radical Politics,” with a a social activist’s point of view, particularly which prominent leaders such as Krahl were presentation titled “Democratic Intolerance,” drawing from her experiences with legal prac- infl uenced by theorists such as Adorno and, in which he explicated Marcuse’s 1965 es- tices and legislation. Although elements of in light of the scholar’s resistance to praxis, say, “Repressive Tolerance,” and extracted Marcuse’s thought contributed to arguments in fact used Adorno’s thought against him. several primary theses: Tolerance towards in support of laws intended to eliminate rac- all opinions has lost its historically opposi- ism and its dissemination, some of these same The morning session was concluded by John tional force and now serves not democratic laws today work against people of color (e.g., Abromeit (SUNY Buffalo State), whose progress but the repressive status quo; there- ‘hate speech’ laws are more often invoked presentation, “Herbert Marcuse and the So- fore, progressive democracy must begin to against people of color), thus accomplishing cial Psychology of Right-Wing Populism” incorporate intolerance in certain spheres the opposite of what they were intended to elucidated the historical context and contem- of discourse, such as the political, where do. Consequently, Marcuse’s claim that “the porary relevance of Marcuse’s posthumously life and happiness are at stake; determining telos of tolerance is truth” relies upon a be- published essay, “The Historical Fate of Bour 5 geois Democracy” (1972). Witnessing the re- Aesthetic Education of Mankind, with its ideal regard within the Frankfurt School tradition. election of Richard Nixon, the persistent war of a harmonious unfolding of joyful play and campaign in Vietnam, and the abandonment rational freedom in an aesthetic state. How- In the workshop’s fi nal presentation, titled of socialist democracy in the consolidation of ever, workshop participants also criticized the “Queer Pleasure in Marcuse and Foucault,” conservative movements in Europe, Marcuse lack of historicity in Freud’s and Marcuse’s Peter Rehberg (DAAD Professor, UT Aus- observes social and psychological factors respective theories: The antinomy between tin) staged a missed encounter between Mar- involved in the political shifts of the time. sensuous bodily instincts and reason is itself cuse and Queer Theory, relating Marcuse’s historical and could be overcome if the totality Eros to Michel Foucault’s concept of plea- Marcuse asserts that bourgeois democracy of social relations were organized differently. sure. Rehberg explained Queer Theory’s dis- relies upon the identifi cation of the work- missal of Marcuse as a consequence of the ing class with leaders in power, which re- In her presentation titled “Liberation of Na- strong infl uence that Foucault’s anti-repres- sulted in irrational and dangerous domestic ture as Human Liberation,” Mari Jarris sive hypothesis has had upon the fi eld since and foreign policy as well as in class divi- (Wesleyan University) discussed Marcuse’s its inception: In comparison to Foucault’s sions being replaced by racial discrimination. chapter on “Nature and Revolution” in Coun- account of power as a productive rather than Abromeit cited contemporary social histori- terrevolution and Revolt (1972), fl eshing out repressive force, Marcuse’s writings on sex- cal research on racism in the working class the role Marcuse attributes to internal and ex- ual liberation in Eros and Civilization were in the US, the construction of a white iden- ternal nature in the development of a “new bound to look hopelessly naïve. Neverthe- tity, and systematic racism both in the his- radical sensibility” capable of effectively re- less, as Rehberg demonstrated, Foucault’s ac- torical context of Marcuse’s essay and today. sisting capitalism’s instrumental rationality. count of productive power owes much to the idea of commodifi ed pleasure, or “repressive Aligned with the work of social philosopher Jarris criticized Marcuse’s essentializing desublimation,” which Marcuse developed in André Gorz, Abromeit emphasized that a account of a supposedly peaceful female his later work One-Dimensional Man (1964). new rationality and sensibility becomes nec- nature in this context, and part of the ensu- essary as wealth accumulates among an ever- ing discussion revolved around the question Rehberg also made a case for acknowledg- decreasing portion of the population and a of how to treat such compromised passages ing the similarity of the utopian moment new caste society emerges. The discussion in contemporary scholarship on Marcuse. of pleasure in Foucault, which can be jux- focused on the privileging of productivity Workshop participants also posed ques- taposed to the sex-knowledge regime of that is visible in today’s political landscape, tion as to how to rescue Marcuse from the power, and the emancipatory dimensions of particularly in the US in minimum wage de- critique often posited against Negri and Eros in Marcuse’s work. As a way of read- bates and Tea Party agendas, and on a global Hardt, which asks how a refuge to nature ing the material aspects of Foucault, Reh- level, in the history of colonialism, in which can be read as something beyond an undia- berg’s concluding suggestion was to make racial discourse overwhelms class differ- lectical exit from historically complex an- space for Marcuse in a new, anti-capital- entiation and furthermore becomes aligned tagonisms inherent in reifi ed social relations. ist project of Queer Theory. (Jette Gindner) with productivity. (Miyako Hayakawa) Katherine Brewer-Ball (Mellon Fellow, Workshop co-organizer Ulrich Plass opened Wesleyan University) delivered a presen- the afternoon session on “Critical Aesthet- tation titled “Remembrances of Freedom: ics and Queer Pleasure” with his presen- What Can Art Do?” in which she brought tation, “Reason and Gratifi cation,” which Marcuse’s text on “Art and Revolution” from focused on the “Philosophical Interlude” Counterrevolution and Revolt into dialogue in Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (1955). with the work of artists and ACT UP activ- ists Zoe Leonard and David Wojnarowicz. Retracing Marcuse’s elaboration of Sig- mund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discon- Starting with Leonard’s propensity to photo- tents and Freud’s notion of Lust (pleasure, graph clouds during the height of the AIDS joy), Plass interrogated the peculiar role of crisis and her activism, Brewer-Ball used the concept of reason in Marcuse’s text. On Leonard’s work and Wojnarowicz’s com- the one hand, Marcuse portrays the history ments on it to refl ect on the role of beauty of philosophy as an unfolding of “the Logos in politics. Both Wojnarowicz and Marcuse of domination,” which he seeks to undo via locate a utopian function in the aesthetic recourse to Nietzsche’s circular temporal- form, or think of beauty “as the sensuous ap- ity of the eternal recurrence interpreted as pearance of the idea of freedom” (Marcuse). a joyful eroticization of being. On the other Brewer-Ball pointed out that while Mar- hand, and in contrast to Wilhelm Reich, cuse initially locates resistance in street art, Marcuse retains reason (which he seeks to after the fall of the New Left he returns to re-appropriate as “logos of gratifi cation”) high art, identifying it as that which is sepa- as a constitutive means towards attaining rate from reality and allows us to imagine a just society in which pleasure becomes freedom. However, unlike Adorno, Marcuse practical freedom and is no longer at odds also claims that such resistant art should sub- with the demands of rational self-interest. vert traditional material preserved in folk art and traditions. Discussants challenged The ensuing discussion brought up similari- Marcuse’s later dismissal of pop culture, and ties between Marcuse and Friedrich Schiller’s considered how to situate his work in this New Directions in Interdisciplinary German Studies IGCS Symposium

October 25, 2013 Brunonian system of medicine. He then search for authenticity after 1945. Trag- proceeded to his proposed trans-imperial ap- edy effects individualization through expul- Following introductory remarks by Paul proach, which placed Humboldt in a network sion from the chorus; the individual is ma- Fleming (co-organizer of the event, to- of discourse on diseases in warm climates. ture when he has found his own language. gether with Leslie Adelson), Suman Seth Schleef’s goal in reinstalling the chorus was (Cornell, Science and Technology Stud- This network connected, across national to achieve a linguistic conference, break- ies) presented work from a book project on and imperial boundaries, a German explorer ing the illusion of the individual in theatre. theories and practices of human, animal, and (Humboldt) in search for an explanation for a plant acclimatization in England, France, Mexican affl iction with a Philadelphian doc- The connection between the diaries and the and Germany from 1760 to 1914. In his talk, tor (Benjamin Rush), who in turn derived his theatre for Siegel is that the diaries, particu- titled “Difference and Disease: Alexander understanding of seasoning from the unpub- larly in the “Container” project, are inscribed von Humboldt and the Problem of Season- lished lectures of his Scottish professor (Wil- into a classical context for the genre. In ing,” Seth problematized Susanne Zantop’s liam Cullen), who had spent the early years of “Container,” the language of the individual notion of “latent colonialism” as well as his career as a surgeon in the West Indies study- monologue is confessional, as would be a de- George Steinmetz’ (2007) notion of German ing cases of yellow fever. (Andreea Mascan) fense. The text of the diary has no purpose of “pre-colonial ethnographic representations” art, but rather devotes itself to truth and to re- of the tropics in German language texts. Elke Siegel’s (Cornell, German Studies) lec- membering. For Schleef, a diary is not about ture “Nulle Dies Sine Linea: Einar Schleef’s authenticity. Instead the act of remembering, In an attempt to avoid the teleological im- Diary Project (1953-2001)” considered the like the act of speaking, is a labor of re-read- plications of categorizing German relations implications of Schleef’s diary project to- ing and commenting. This work of re-read- to the tropics in the eighteenth century as gether with the author’s career as an actor, ing and commenting added additional text, pre-colonial, Seth emphasized the need to theatre director, and set designer. At stake but Schleef was at pains not to modify or re- discuss ways in which Non-European coun- in Schleef’s diary as well as in his theatrical write his fi rst layer of text. The diary is thus tries enter German texts, and the way they praxis is the question of language production, a palimpsest of the self. (Alexander Philips) function in their own terms. As an alterna- authenticity, and the constitution of the self. tive to pre-coloniality, Seth suggested a focus In his paper entitled “Job as a Model of on “tropical presence” in representations of Einar Schleef began keeping a diary in Hope,” Hirokazu Miyazaki (Cornell, An- tropical environment and climate in medi- 1953 at the age of nine, and pursued di- thropology) discussed readings of the Biblical cal texts and travelogues. As a methodology, ary projects sporadically until his death in story of Job, to describe conditions in North- Seth proposed a trans-imperial approach to 2001. The diaries refl ect the 1953 worker’s ern Japan after the March 2011 earthquake, understanding the relations between eigh- uprising in Schleef’s native East Germany, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Fukushima. teenth century Europe and the tropics, al- his troubled family life, a 1960 accident in Refl ecting on his personal experience of the lowing for a synchronic tracking of multiple which he fell out of a train and had to spend Fukushima disasters and daily reportage that points of connection, including the realms a year in the hospital, and his 1976 move to continues to assess human and environmen- of the natural, the historical, and the human. the West. Schleef transcribed and, essential tal damages to the region, Miyazaki noted for Siegel’s argument, added comments to feelings of deep epistemic uncertainty and Seth demonstrated his approach by inter- his diaries as early as 1960, but most of this distrust. Amidst political denial and insuffi - rogating Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769- work was done in the late 1990s, as Schleef cient or falsifi ed scientifi c knowledge about 1859) theory of tropical seasoning, a phe- prepared his writings from 1961 to 1999, for the effects of radioactivity, the population of nomenon that in nineteenth century England publication as part of a project called Con- Northern Japan has nowhere to turn but to would come to be known as acclimatiza- tainer Berlin. The work was intended for each other to resolve their fears. Despite the tion. Humboldt’s interest in seasoning is the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the seemingly overwhelmingly helpless situation, spurred by a case of differential infectivity fall of the Berlin Wall, although Suhrkamp Miyazaki developed readings of Job’s suffer- of the disease known as yellow fever. Hum- Publishing rejected the manuscript. ing to show how hope springs from the return boldt notes that in the Mexican port of Ve- to human relationality spurred by the disaster. racruz, while natives of the immediate re- The act of speaking was laborious for gion are unaffected, the disease spreads not Schleef, who had a speech impediment, and Miyazaki turned fi rst to Ernst Bloch’s search only among Europeans, who are new to the who frequently refl ected on language produc- for hope in “The Book of Job” in Atheismus area, but also to natives of nearby regions. tion as akin to giving birth. Siegel juxtaposed im Christentum (1968). In contrast to tradi- Schleef’s diaries with his career as a theatre tional readings that focus on the triumph of In tracing how Humboldt develops an ex- artist; the diary is seemingly a private space truth and conclude that Job is ultimately re- planation for this apparent inconsistency devoted to exploring the individual, and thus deemed at the end of the trials, Bloch argues of infection, Seth deployed a double con- the opposite of the social space of the theatre. that Job’s situation remains unresolved and textualization. Following the circulation his story avenges human struggle by pro- of knowledge from the metropole to the Schleef’s theatre explores the process of in- claiming the heresy of the human condition. periphery, Seth began by connecting Hum- dividualization through a re-introduction of Miyazaki then showed how anthropologist boldt’s theory to concepts of human biol- the chorus, which is a break from conven- Meyer Fortes’ 1957 lecture, published in Oe- ogy and stimulation in Galvanism and the tion, with what Schleef viewed as a failed dipus and Job in West African Religions, con- 7 trasts Western and West African thought to look at television,” written before the back- argue the centrality to the story of fi lial policy drop of 1950s television culture. In Ador- and divine effi cacy derived by mortals. Also no’s text, television appears as a domestic concerned with hope as a product of human medium that is associated with women’s struggle, Antonio Negri’s The Labor of Job household work, and is characterized by (2009) argues that the relationship between the uniformity of television programming. humanity and divinity is transformed into a matter of immanent relationality when Job Villarejo discussed how Adorno demon- fi nally sees God. Shifting focus away from strates that television reproduces sociopo- theological debates, Edwin Good emphasizes litical structures, and understands television the consolation Job fi nds in shared quotid- as a representation of stereotypes. However, ian activities in In Turns of Tempest (1990). she also observed that Adorno also provides close textual analysis of specifi c program- Yet consolation and return to normality no ming, although she conceded that his read- more resolve Job’s suffering then they do the ings mostly neglect the visual element of politics of denial and shared feelings of dis- television, possibly as a result of his work- trust in post-Fukushima Northeastern Japan. ing directly with the scripts. She then con- Although human relations are the only com- trasted Adorno’s criticism with Raymond fort in times of suffering and revoked truth, Williams’ book, Television: Technology and relationality is often also deeply oppressive. Cultural Form (2003). Infl uenced by the new The irresolution of the nuclear disaster pro- experience of US television with its many duces hope through a continuous need to be commercial breaks and trailers for future in relation. Concluding, Miyazaki noted that programming, Williams studies television as “kizuna,” Japanese for “bonds,” was selected a practice, focusing on the sequential qual- as the 2011 “kanji of the year.” Popular debates ity of television and the “fl ow” that syn- about the term as both a symbol of persever- chronizes the viewers: a fl ow that leads to ance and nationalistic ideology foreground the the abandonment of critical modes, but also importance and diffi culty of human relation- opens up a potential for communal practices. ality in the absence of truth. (Katrina Nousek) Villarejo concluded that the different ways Amy Villarejo, department chair and pro- of writing about television – Adorno’s focus fessor in the Department of Performing ism, had been aiming at a study of visual on individual programming in contrast to and Media Arts at Cornell, spoke on “Criti- culture, he never actually wrote on televi- Williams’ study of the “fl ow” – also marked cal Theory, Cultural Studies, and the Death sion, but rather focused mostly on cinema. a historical shift in the development of TV of Television.” Villarejo explained that her from the 1950s to the 1970s. Today’s tele- presentation on television was inspired by Villarejo moved on to speak about The- vision studies, she suggested, also need to Jameson’s strategy of gathering strands odor Adorno’s writing on television from reconsider their approach, since the digital from both critical theory and cultural stud- the 1950s, puzzling as to why it has not yet migration of television on the one hand, and ies to think about visual culture. However, been revived in the service of recent, in par- the fl ourishing of reality and amateur TV on while Jameson, in his 1991 Postmodern- ticular queer, television studies. She specifi - the other, have induced another signifi cant ism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capital- cally referenced Adorno’s article “How to shift in television culture. (Hannah Müller) Call for Submissions The Peter Uwe Hohendahl Graduate Essay Prize in Critical Theory The Institute for German Cultural Studies is pleased to announce its 2014 call for submissions for The Peter Uwe Hohendahl Graduate Essay Prize in Critical Theory. This named prize honors a distinguished scholar of international renown for his many publications on German literatures of modernity, comparative intellectual histories, critical theory writ large and the Frankfurt School especially, and the history and desiderata of university education in Europe and North America. As Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature from 1977 to 2011, Peter Uwe Hohendahl taught and inspired many Cor- nell students on the importance of critical theory for public life and the collective good.

Essay submissions may be submitted in German or English on any topic pertaining to critical theory, and registered graduate students in any relevant fi eld of study at Cornell University are eligible to apply. Only one submission per person. The author of the winning essay will be awarded a prize of $250.

Essays may be up to 25 double-spaced pages in length and should be submitted under an assumed name. Authors must indicate their primary fi elds of study on the essay and submit a sealed envelope containing the author’s identity, including student ID number, local address, telephone, and Cornell e-mail address. The title of the essay submitted for prize consideration must be entered on the outside of the envelope. The deadline for submission is October 15. Entries should be submitted to Olga Petrova, Assistant to the Director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies, at . IGCS offi ces are located at 726 University Avenue on the third fl oor (tel. 255 8408).

The Peter Uwe Hohendahl Graduate Essay Prize in Critical Theory is made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous donor. lishment, Thoma- man calls an “implicit Westphalianism.” Retrospective: Fall 2013 sius turned into an enfant terrible ex- Newman fi nds a possible alternative model iled from his home- for building a World Literature in Erich Au- Colloquium Series town; in his later erbach’s reading of Dante, which relies on a years as a professor Thomistic model of totality. In the theology Anfänge der Aufklärung in Halle, he exploit- of the thirteenth-century Dominican Saint ed the possibilities of a new media public and Thomas Aquinas, creation achieves a like- September 6, 2013 forged various alliances with the court, the ness to God only through its vast diversity; church, and the state – supposed enemies of the divine unity of God is manifested in the In the fi rst colloquium of the Fall 2013 series, the Enlightenment – to advance his agenda. material diversity of creation. Likewise, Au- Steffen Martus (Humboldt Universität zu erbach reads Dante as using specifi c con- Berlin) delivered a paper titled “Anfänge der Focal points of the discussion following Mar- crete phenomena to capture a divine totality. tus’ presentation included problems of narra- tive form, the status of historical linguistics, Drawing from his 1929 monograph, Dante: the changing status of rhetoric during the Poet of the Secular World, his essay, “Phi- eighteenth century and, on the occasion of the lology and Weltliteratur” (1952), and other non-specialist audience of the book, the differ- lectures, essays, and posthumously pub- ent intellectual climates and publishing land- lished writing, Newman argued that Auer- scapes in Germany and in the United States. bach’s model of a “world” or “planetary” Among many of the discussion points, Ernst totality allows for an “alternative post- Bloch’s concept of Non-simultaneity emerged Westphalianism,” through which it is pos- as a possible fi gure for addressing the double sible to constitute a World Literature with- risk inherent in historical narrative, of homog- out deferring to hegemonic power systems. enization on the one hand, and loss of coher- ency on the other. (Johannes Wankhammer) Newman emphasized the necessity of a model Aufklärung,“ a chapter draft for a forthcoming of World Literature that accounts for concrete monograph on the German Enlightenment. literary texts both in their specifi city and in Martus’ paper addressed the methodological their relationship to the world as a whole. challenge of narrating a historical epoch by Auerbach’s Worlds: Dante’s Political Following Auerbach, she proposed an anti- interweaving a historical account with meta- Theology as a Point of Departure for supersessional model of literature, which refl ections on narration; the Enlightenment a Philology of World Literature reads each text “at the level of the planet,” thus comes into view as a time that narrates that is, both for the world it contains in itself itself through the fi gure of a new beginning. September 20, 2013 and for its ability to radiate out into the world, or planetary whole. By tracing Auerbach’s The turn from the seventeenth to the eigh- Jane O. Newman (University of California, thought to its Thomistic infl uences, Newman teenth century was for the fi rst time debated Irvine) presented a paper entitled “Auer- found in pre-modern thought a possible point as a temporal incision marking the beginning bach’s Worlds: Dante’s Political Theology as of departure for an alternative post-Westpha- of a new epoch. This contrasts with the cycli- a Point of Departure for a Philology of World lian method of World Literature. (Leigh York) cal view of time that was prevalent in earlier Literature.” Newman argued that anthologies centuries and that continued, as Martus em- of World Literature tend phasized, to exert a strong infl uence through- to incorporate new lit- out the complex and internally ambiguous eratures only by exclud- Jewish Trouble: Reading Butler period since called the Enlightenment. While ing older texts, thereby Reading Others the cyclical view of time construed the world practicing a “superses- as composed of a fi nite set of elements that sionalist” expansionism October 18, 2013 could only be redistributed and rearranged that is not truly inclusive. over time, the seventeenth and eighteenth Despite an appearance Jonathan Boyarin (Cornell) presented a pa- centuries saw the emergence of a new sen- of inclusivity, the relations among texts in per entitled “Jewish Trouble: Reading Butler sibility that understood human production World Literature discourses are often deter- Reading Others,” in which he conducted a as a source of the genuinely new, unlocking mined by political inequalities of size, power, close analysis and critique of Judith Butler’s the future as an open horizon of possibilities and prestige. This refl ects what International 2012 monograph, Parting Ways: Jewishness yet to be realized. It is not least a pervasive Relations scholars have termed a “post-West- and the Critique of Zionism. With a focus on “project consciousness” (Projektbewusstsein) phalian” condition, referring to the model the text’s introduction, Boyarin critically as- concomitant with this future-oriented tempo- of state sovereignty that became the norm sessed the effi cacy and necessity of certain rality that characterizes the Enlightenment. following the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). rhetorical decisions in Butler’s argument, as well as assumptions regarding conceptions of Following a strategy of interweaving literary Despite their diversifying and trans- Judaism and Zionism in relation to each other. and social history with biographical accounts, nationalizing intention, new canons of Martus concluded with a portrait of Christian World Literature often fall into what New- Butler’s project explores the possibility of Thomasius (1655-1728) as an ep- och-making fi gure. Thomasius’ unlikely career is characteristic Newsletter summaries of Institute-sponsored events are generously provided by graduate students in of the complex mélange of posi- various stages of doctoral study in the interdisciplinary fi eld of German Studies at Cornell University. tions and counter-positions that These summaries are customarily written by students with a general audience in mind and highlight gave rise to the Enlightenment: selected aspects of complex presentations by specialists. starting as a conservative mem- ber of Leipzig’s scholarly estab- 9 an anti- context, and furthermore, that a wider range duced and performed through the medium Zionist and more differentiated spectrum of mod- fi lm in shifting, historically specifi c ways. rhetoric els of identifi cation would be more effec- that both tive for Butler’s task. (Miyako Hayakawa) Drawing on contemporary debates on queer- avoids the ness in works by Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky charge of Sedgwick, and others, König extended in- anti-Sem- itism and Of Doubled Men and Deceased sights on queer performativity and epistemol- ogies to the fi lmic medium with the goal of does not Souls—A German Media Archaeology emphasizing fi lm’s production of queer male promote of Queer Masculinities, 1895-1933 a notion desire. Through a reading of Sedgwick’s in- of Jewish sights on queer performativity, König de- excep- November 22, 2013 veloped a concept of queerness for fi lm that tionalism. For Butler, critiques of Zionism, grapples with differences between male and of the exclusivity of a Jewish state, and of In a paper entitled “Of Doubled Men and De- female queerness without evoking a strong human rights abuses committed in the name ceased Souls: A German Media Archaeology subject referent, essence, or fi xed identity. of such a state should invoke “fundamental of Queer Masculinities, 1895-1933,” Chris- democratic values” in order to be truly open tiane König (University of Cologne) pro- In this way, König established a methodology to and inclusive of non-Jewish others. A cri- posed a historiography of the medium fi lm, for writing a non-heteronormative history of tique based in Jewish precepts and traditions attentive to histories of “queer masculinities.” runs the danger of merely replacing existing the fi lmic medium that would situate mascu- Queer masculinities, König argued, are cen- line love in a realm of erotic pleasure neither power inequalities with another hegemony, tral to the fi lmic medium insofar as fi lm par- coded as Jewish. In order for Jewish ethi- mired in binaries of hetero/homo or male/fe- ticipates as a material-semiotic agent in the cal standards to apply to non-Jewish popu- male, nor bound to oedipal family structures, lations, values must be translated into more active production of cultural gender norms naturalized homosexuality, or homosocial broadly applicable ethical frameworks. In and identities. Though neither teleological nor bonds. Rather, the proposed history is de- her critique, Butler engages selected twen- linear, the media history developed by König rived from “unpleasurable, uncanny” sources, tieth century European Jewish intellectuals, focused on Germany, and spanned early ap- brought to public display through fi lm. Male- most signifi cantly Emmanuel Levinas, Wal- pearances of the medium fi lm in the 1890s male desire or queer masculinities thus belong ter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Primo through the rise of the Nazi dictatorship. integrally in the history of the fi lmic medium’s Levi, as well as Palestinian intellectuals, Ed- self-constitution as medium. (Nathan Taylor) ward Said and the poet Mahmoud Darwish. For König, a queer perspective on the history of fi lm undertakes a critical intervention in me- Boyarin emphasized that Butler’s critique of dia theoretical and archaeological discourses Zionism simultaneously seeks to articulate a notion of “Jewishness” that is open to oth- by emphasizing how fi lm’s epistemological, Environmental Depredation and ers, thus setting for itself two distinct goals aesthetic, and technical capacities incorpo- rate a will to power. For König, this power, Aesthetic Refl ection in Wilhelm that need not be pursued together. Boyarin Raabe’s Pfi ster’s Mühle and Die Akten argued against the inextricability of Juda- which she termed “Lustwissen and/or Wis- ism from Zionism, referring to extant Jew- senslust” is inherent to pleasures of knowing, des Vogelsangs ish criticism of Zionism, as well as to the seeing, and being seen, orchestrated by the historical multiplicity of Jewish practices medium fi lm. Lustwissen operates not only in December 6, 2013 of identifi cation and Zionist movements. fi lm’s modes of repre- sentation, but most Alexander Phillips (Cornell University) A potent critique, Boyarin sug- importantly, in its closed the fall colloquium series with his gested, might subversively appro- technical capacities, paper “Envi- priate the very rhetoric of a par- ronmental ticularist hegemony. Boyarin also such as its principles Depredation questioned the need for a process of transduction and of translation to facilitate receptiv- remediation, as well and Aesthet- ity of Jewish values among those as its processuality. ic Refl ection who are not Jewish, positing that in Wilhelm Biblical injunctions such as “thou With an emphasis Raabe’s shalt not kill” are not in fact im- on transduction, Pfisters plicitly limited to a Jewish popu- for instance, König Mühle and lation, as Butler argues they are. observed that fi lm Die Akten offers specifi cally des Vo- In Butler’s argument, Boyarin detected a gelsangs.” mapping of an ontological Jewish identity transduced gendered identities: more than By carefully attending to these self-aware onto Zionism, contrasted with relational- simply reproducing a gendered image or re- ity, contingency, and openness to encoun- ality, fi lm actively produces what it depicts, narratives that register the immediate con- ter with others, which in turn are mapped altering properties and qualities of its object. sequences of industrialization on the natu- onto diasporism. Boyarin maintained that a By deploying a concept of interfaces to de- ral environments of previously idyllic strong sense of Jewish identity and commu- scribe sites wherein projected images affect spaces, Phillips argued that Raabe’s envi- nity, necessarily caught in tensions between viewers and relating this, in turn, to fi lm’s ronmental thematic represents an impor- the particular and the universal, can be ef- principles of transduction, König traced pro- tant engagement with a central aesthetic fective against chauvinism in a diasporic cesses by which queer masculinities are pro- aporia of programmatic German realism. Because the writing narrators of Pfi sters Mühle the dissonant image of an industrial idyll. social dimension of these projections of nature. (1884) and Die Akten des Vogelsangs (1896) seek to locate poetic potential in a prosaic, Die Akten des Vogelsangs moves from a con- Raabe’s narratives thus disrupt the fantasies modern world in ways that recall Friedrich sideration of the possibilities of the aesthetic that yoke aesthetic perception and produc- Theodor Vischer’s seminal theoretical empha- as such to a critical exploration of the legacy tion to harmonious natural idylls, without sis on grüne Stellen, the two texts offer a pro- of programmatic realism. Phillips read the also abandoning a commitment to the project ductive and self-refl ective encounter with the novel’s thematic insistence on the color green of programmatic realism. A vivacious collo- aesthetic legacy of German realism in the his- as an articulation of an immanent aesthetic quium discussion touched, among other top- torical context of increasing industrialization. tendency within German realism, whereby the ics, on the roles of Verklärung, media, per- Pfi sters Mühle critically refl ects upon the same logic of isolation and preservation that ception, and historical change in the context fraught status of natural idylls – and by ex- enables green spaces also signals their undo- of German realism; the stakes of pollution tension, of aesthetic experience as such – in ing. While memories of the idyllic neighbor- and purity in the context of a history of the an age of rapid environmental depredation. hood of Vogelsang serve as a projection of senses; the analytic status of capitalism in Romantic idylls, including the narrator’s past innocence and harmony after Vogelsang narratives of historical progress and aesthetic own desire for natural beauty, are ironized has been incorporated into urban sprawl, the change; and methodological issues involved to the extent that a purely aesthetic relation- category of the natural itself is undercut by in identifying a dialectical relationship be- ship to nature is shown to be complicit in episodes of failed aesthetic identifi cation or tween nature and society. (Carl Gelderloos) its own confounding, and the text ends with enjoyment in the text that show the complicit

between Schmitt and the Imagist movement Retrospective: Spring 2014 around which he constructed his analyses. Colloquium Series Much discussion at the event centered on how Rasch explored the function of the sovereign as a decision-maker. Rasch noted dangerous because it fails to acknowledge that Schmitt’s conception of sovereignty is Carl Schmitt, Modernist: On Making the role of power in the world. As Rasch idiosyncratic, insofar as it is not limited to Power Visible emphasized, Schmitt believes that good traditional qualities such as a monarch or and evil are not inscribed in power, but a ruler who dictates the norms of conduct. March 7, 2014 rather that power is simply given, and Rather, sovereignty is grounded in the since it exists it ought to be properly existential claim that power requires an William Rasch (Indiana University) opened displayed, “clearly in the full light of day.” agent who makes a decision—as Schmitt the Spring 2014 colloquium series sponsored famously declares, “the Sovereign is he by the Institute for German Cultural Rasch positioned Schmitt as a political who decides on exception.” The crucial theorist who recuperates a notion of political point for Rasch’s argument was Schmitt’s honesty by acknowledging the fact that claim that the state of exception functions modern political practice includes a rhetoric as a moment of crisis in which the public of virtue, which must be exposed for what it is. demands the decision-maker to become Similarly, Rasch argued that modernist poets visible and accountable. (Matthew Stoltz) such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Hulme and Wyndham Lewis were fi rmly committed to honest language that constructs simple images inviting thought, contemplation Ontological Indifference: Orders and and further intellectual inquiry. Unlike Disorders of German Romanticism their Romantic predecessors, these Imagist poets expressed a deep skepticism towards March Studies, with a paper titled “Carl Schmitt, poetic language that represents sublime 21, 2014 Modernist,” in which he argued that there enthusiasm, decadence, yearning, and the are affi nities between Schmitt’s political infi nite. Imagism overcame its skepticism Gabriel theory and Anglo-American Imagism of by approaching language with an ethos that Trop the early twentieth century. Rasch observed emphasized restraint and, at the same time, (Univer- that Schmitt’s theory is invested in exposing activated highly concentrated instances of sity of politics that conceal power behind a rhetoric thought through singular, concrete images. North of virtue. Carolina Much like Schmitt’s project of promoting Chapel According to Rasch, Schmitt would fi nd political honesty, Imagists such as Pound Hill) pre- the denial of Machtpolitik (power politics) sought to use clear distinctions and precise sented a paper entitled “Ontological Indiffer- to be a more pernicious manifestation of defi nitions in order to critique language ence: Orders and Disorders of German Ro- Machiavellism than a kind that merely that conceals meaning or intention. Rasch manticism.” Trop argued for an approach to favors force over moral virtue. Such denial is identifi ed a “language of visibility” as the link Romantic poetics that shifts its emphasis from 11 an “absolute of identity” to an “absolute of at- turb an absolute of identity. (Nathan Taylor) the German media struggled to form a narra- traction.” Tracing the role of this latter “sec- tive or even fi nd a term for the phenomenon ond-order absolute,” Trop sought to identify of a mass shooting, coverage of the 2009 energies of attraction and repulsion in Nova- event made use of an already established lis’ poetics that destabilize the status of being German Rampage: Media, Discourse, narrative and category of social understand- as a master signifi er for singularity. Trop’s and the Emergence of a Disturbing ing. From this comparative analysis, Ahrens project thus calls for new practices of reading Phenomenon concluded that the question as to whether or that are attuned phenomenologically to more not an act of extreme violence is classifi ed dynamic textual practices of Romanticism— April as a case of Amoklaufen is dependent upon practices that fi xate less on pure identity and 11, 2014 and constituted by the social discourse with embark instead on an energetic movement which it is addressed in the media. Conse- between zones of difference and indifference. Jörn quently, according to Ahrens, a large por- Ahrens tion of media coverage consists of nothing (Justus- more than proof that these events should, Trop argued that “zones of indifference,” Liebig- in fact, be labeled as acts of Amoklaufen. in which static signs and differences mul- Uni- tiply and in turn collapse into one another, versität The presentation prompted a lively discus- fi gure crucially in a Romantic poetics that Gießen) sion that circled around the question as to conceives of being not only as “oneness” or presented whether or not one can focus an analysis absolute identity, but also as a multivalent his paper, on the way in which media coverage shapes sign full of attractive and repulsive charges, “German the social discourse of one specifi c type of characterized by movement, divergence, and Rampage: violence, namely, Amoklaufen, or if such multiplicity. In this way, Romantic poetics Media, an analysis of media coverage necessitates entails two “co-present ontologies,” which Discourse, and the Emergence of a Disturb- consideration of structural violence and the are neither mutually exclusive nor aporetical- ing Phenomenon,” which is part of a larger manner in which media activity screens and ly entwined, but rather entertain a perturbing research project that compares and contrasts obscures such violence. While Ahrens was relationship. An ontology of absolute iden- media representations and the social under- sympathetic to concerns regarding structural tity is upset, repurposed, and disturbed by standing of acts of violence that take the form violence, he insisted that it is still possible an equally pervasive ontology of attraction. of a rampage or school shooting (Amokla- to reduce the scope of a study to particular ufen) in the United States and in Germany. cases of violence without addressing struc- In particular, Ahrens asks why it is that tural violence as such. (Stephen Klemm) Trop’s case for a Romantic absolute of at- these forms of violence can be classifi ed as traction, informed in part by contemporane- Amoklaufen and, thereby, can be seen as fall- ous scientifi c discourses, and his emphasis ing outside the sphere of violent actions that on zones of indifference pivoted on careful are otherwise generally viewed as regrettable Continental Memory and Racial readings of Novalis’ work, notably of his but ‘acceptable’ aspects of life within society. Amnesia: Western Europe as Fichte-Studien and late poem, “Alle Men- Postsocialist and Postcolonial Space schen seh ich leben” (1800). Through a series In his paper and presentation, Ahrens analyzed of countertheses, posited against commonly the manner in which two major German me- May 2, 2014 circulated theses concerning the absolute of dia outlets, Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter identity, Trop drew attention to easily over- Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), reported on two The Spring 2014 colloquium series conclud- looked aspects of Novalis’ philosophical separate cases of Amoklaufen that occurred ed with a paper entitled “Continental Mem- understanding of the absolute, being, and in Germany: in Erfurt in 2002 and in Win- ory and Racial Amnesia: Western Europe as identity. Trop thus showed how Novalis’ con- nenden in 2009. The goal of this comparison Postsocialist and Postcolonial Space,” pre- ception of being can never quite be herme- was to analyze the way in which these media sented by Fatima El-Tayeb (University of neutically pinned down, but can be discerned outlets negotiated and constituted the social California San Diego). The paper examined in the poetic texture of his work in its “fl ow space in which cases of Amoklaufen came the evolving role of Germany in the construc- of order and disorder,” or its Schweben, to to be determined. Ahrens observed that the tion of a transnational European identity. invoke what Trop identifi ed as a crucial po- contrasting media depictions of the two dif- When Germany’s integration into post-1990 etic term for Novalis’ absolute of attraction. ferent cases show how these media outlets Europe rendered the antagonism between did not merely portray a violent act for which an “undemocratic [German] aggressor” and As Trop’s reading of Novalis’ poem showed, a certain convention of representation was an absolute of attraction is activated by mo- a “democratic Europe” untenable, the role already available. Instead, Ahrens argued of the aggressor – which had long framed mentum engendered by the poetic text, and that the media struggled to defi ne and deter- not for instance in its allegories: On the lev- twentieth-century European history – was in mine a social space and discourse, by means part ascribed to communities perceived to be els of meter, sound and semantics one fi nds of which cases of rampage or Amoklaufen moments when oppositions are erased, iden- “non-European,” consisting of Black, Roma fi rst took on an identity as a specifi c type of and Sinti, and European Muslim populations tities upset, and both differentiations and in- violent action fundamentally different from differentiations abound. It is in the pushing in particular. Such assessments, supported other types of violence whose narrative and by legal, cultural, economic and academic and pulling, in the swaying between being representation has already been determined and non-being, and in zones of indifference discourses, attribute to these communities that an absolute of attraction works to per- the status of permanent newcomers, whose Ahrens argued that in contrast to 2002, when expulsion could put an end to Europe’s the slave trade on the continent’s history ence of the “non-European” Soviet Union. and its present. Furthermore, the narrative resists multiethnic and multi-religious ac- The US-led, Europe-aided intervention in counts of Europe’s history and present, and Kosovo was framed as a reenactment of instead produces the novelty of a “multi- World War II, in the process of which fas- cultural” state – a notion that implicates cism was “fi nally… successfully moved out both its own failure and need for regulation. from Europe’s geographical center to its east- ern periphery.” During the confl ict, Bosnian In recent decades, the collapse of the Soviet Muslims were portrayed as the “European” Bloc created a need for fi nding another tar- victims of a new fascism; however, since get on which to project Europe’s ills. Such September 11, 2001, Muslims in Europe uncertain economic and political future. targets were found in the former East Ger- and the Middle East have become redefi ned many, the confl ict in the former Yugoslavia, as antithetical to European civilization, ren- The resulting narratives correspond to Stu- the “war on terror” in the Middle East, and dered scapegoats for the dismantling of the art Hall’s “internalist” conceptualization of among Germany’s own Muslim population. West European system, and portrayed as continental Europe as “both homogeneous Since the unifi cation of East and West Ger- anti-Semites. This latter development re- and entirely self-generated.” Such a concep- many in 1990, a West-German narrative has confi gures white Christian Europe as the tualization perceives “migrants” and their collapsed the GDR’s complex forty-year his- savior, rather than the persecutor of the Jew- descendants as unassimilable and remains tory with Stalinism, interpreting East Ger- ish minority, and as constantly challenged oblivious of the effects of colonialism and man anti-Semitism as the lingering infl u- by Muslim outsiders. (Anna Horakova)

Lectures and Events Tatort – Serie und/oder Werk

September 11, 2013 consists of a variety of single fi lms and short- er series that have in their entirety a historical In her lecture, entitled “Tatort – Serie und/ signifi cance. Thus, core features of both seri- oder Werk,” Claudia Stockinger (Georg- ality and a complete, coherent work are part August-Universität Göttingen) focused on of every Tatort. Within such a work, varia- questions of genre in analyzing the popu- tions of serial form can be observed: the new lar German television show Tatort. At fi rst is narrated as the slightly changed old, and glance, the categories of “television series” operates on the basis of a certain continuity. and “work” seem to be mutually exclusive, as a work relies on categories such as uni- With a close reading of selected scenes, formity, coherence, and completedness for its Stockinger demonstrated that single epi- defi nition, while a series is conceptualized for sodes, and retrospectively, the series as a continuity. Stockinger, however, demonstrat- whole, clearly contain the characteristics of ed that neither a serial-aesthetic nor a work- a single work. Stockinger showed that the aesthetic model in isolation are suffi cient in police procedural can be assigned a work-im- describing the police drama series Tatort. manent aesthetic on three levels: on the level of the single episode, on the level of single Stockinger began by observing several char- series (with respect to the detectives at re- acteristics of Tatort that make it unlike a tele- gional and state levels), and on the level of vision series in a traditional sense, such as the the series as a whole, which takes place in show’s length of production, from 1970 until the entire Federal Republic and contemporar- today, and the series’ concept, which is only ily portrays the cultural history of the nation. applicable within Germany because the vari- ety of broadcasting corporations within ARD Stockinger also posited that Tatort gained in- (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtli- creasing narrative complexity over the years, chen Runfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik identifying self-refl ection as an indicator for Deutschland) results in different teams of in- this development. It can be concluded that, vestigators in their respective regions. Nev- on the one hand, the series shows a cer- ertheless, Tatort clearly operates with certain tain unity in its deployment of plot, array traditional features of a television series, in- of characters, and dramaturgy, but that on cluding credits accompanied by a signature the other hand it is also conceived for con- tune. At the same time, features of a “work” tinuation and seriality. (Giulia Comparato) are also an essential part of Tatort, in that it 13 Intuition, Picturing, Immanence are conceptual, while sensibility is the way in which conceptual intuitions are guided March 12, 2014 and constrained by non-conceptual factors.

Brassier drew attention to the asymme- try between properties of physical objects For the Comparative Cultures and Literature themselves and properties of sense impres- Forum, Ray Brassier (American University sions of the same objects, siding against of Beirut) presented a talk entitled “Intuition, the possibility of any “direct” access to Picturing, Immanence.” Brassier’s presenta- objects in themselves, independent from tion anticipated his upcoming book on 20th the conceptual framework of intuition. century American philosopher Wilfrid Sel- Critiquing notions of perception in which lars (1912-89), drawing on Sellars’ lectures an object “impresses” itself directly on the in Naturalism and Ontology (1979) and mind, Brassier instead used Sellars’ notion tual and rule-governed. Though there exists multiple essays, including “Empiricism and of “picturing” to describe the relationship of an experience outside of concepts, our access the Philosophy of Mind” (1956) and “Some real objects to human knowledge: Picturing to that experience is always conceptually me- Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience” involves a “second-order isomorphism” be- diated. During the discussion following his (1967). Brassier’s talk situated Sellars in tween the properties of objects in the world presentation, Brassier answered questions the history of philosophy, arguing that Sel- and linguistic or conceptual categories. about the nature of Sellars’ picturing, the pos- lars’ reinterpretation of the Kantian thesis sibility of absolute knowledge, and the politi- on the role of intuition challenges later cri- After establishing a Sellarsian model of con- cal relevance of philosophy. In conclusion, tiques of Kant within continental philosophy. ceptual picturing to describe the relationship Brassier emphasized the necessity of philos- of human knowledge to non-conceptual ob- ophy for politics and indicated a long-term Brassier’s analysis centered on the relation- jects, Brassier critiqued notions of experi- goal of reconciling post-Darwinian natural- ship between conceptual knowledge and the ence found in certain strands of continental ism with historical materialism. (Leigh York) receptivity of perception, mediated through the thought, specifi cally in the works of Henri- Kantian concepts of intuition and sensibility. Louis Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. While Brassier posited that whereas Kant is unclear thinkers like Bergson and Deleuze have ad- regarding the interaction of intuition and sen- vanced a kind of direct knowledge of non- sibility, Sellars emphatically distinguishes be- conceptual experience, Brassier argued, fol- tween these two terms. For Sellars, intuitions lowing Sellars, that all knowledge is concep-

cine—he dismisses his assistant Wagner’s freiem Grund ein freies Volk zu erschaffen!” Faust (2011 Russia, directed by inquiry into the location of the human soul Within the context of the tetralogy, a found- Aleksandr Sokurov, with Johannes Zeiler, during an opening autopsy as “idle chatter” ing Tat (deed) with the force to establish a Anton Adasinsky, Isolda Dychauk, Hannah (Geschwätz). His shadowy, claustrophobic Volk (people or nation) resonates as proto- Schygulla) world lacks food and money, but is pervaded totalitarian. Sokurov in turn binds this senti- by the sounds of human and animal suffering March 7 and 9, 2014 ment to isolated delusion: After Faust stones and the sights of death, disease, and crime. On March 7 and 9, Cornell Cinema screened Mauricius to death, he runs giddily after Mar- Alexander Sokurov’s fi lm Faust (2011), a free Faust is thus driven to procure a vial of garethe’s disembodied voice, which asks him rendition of the much-adapted myth, which hemlock, when the fi lm’s Mephistoph- received the Venice Film Festival’s highest eles—a corporeally deformed pawnbroker prize, the Golden Lion, upon its premiere. named Maricius Müller (Anton Adasin- sky)—coaxes him away with bread and an While viewers familiar with the legend will answer to the famous problem of biblical recognize its essential characters and plot, translation that plagues the scholar: in the Sokurov provides an unconventional and beginning was not the word, but the deed possibly contentious frame for the tale of (Tat), from which meaning (Sinn) arises. Dr. Faust’s pact with the devil and desire to transcend the material and intellectual It is perhaps Faust’s acknowledgement poverty of worldly existence. The fi lm con- of this translation that secures his place among Sokurov’s “Men of Power.” During cludes Sokurov’s “Men of Power” tetral- where he is going. Disappearing into the fi lm’s their fi nal struggle on an unpopulated, icy ogy, placing Faust in the uneasy historical fi nal panoramic shot of a seemingly endless mountain, Mauricius/Mephistopheles re- company of Adolf Hitler (Moloch, 1999), landscape, Faust replies: “Dahin! Weiter! minds Faust of their contract, in which he Vladimir Lenin (Taurus, 2001), and the Immer weiter!” The caveat of the pact that pledged his soul to the devil in exchange for Japanese emperor Hirohito (The Sun, 2005). allows him to transcend his claustrophobic, one night with his love Margarethe (Isolda worldly existence is to run forever under the How Faust belongs to or prefi gures this Dychauk)—a fate that binds him to eter- illusion of moving forward. (William Krieger) group is not immediately obvious. Sokurov’s nal solitude without salvation. Not grasp- Faust (Johannes Zeiler) embodies a rest- ing his situation, Faust retorts: “Natur und less, brooding masculinity, dissatisfi ed with Geist: Mehr braucht man nicht, um hier auf his academic subjects, theology and medi- W.A. Mozart’s Requiem and G.F. egated to the confi nes of medical facilities. rum”—ends in a tonally ascending crescendo Haas’ 7 Klangräume zu den that climaxes with an instrumental and vocal unvollendeten Fragmenten des Haas’ soundspaces also reject any intention scream. It thus draws the audience into an Requiems von W.A. Mozart of completing the Requiem fragments. Con- aesthetic of the interstitial that Haas achieves sequently, they interrupt a performance of the with each subsequent interjection. In the April 25, 2014 fragments in a manner that differs entirely fourth soundspace, tonal blocks of consonant from works such as Franz Süssmayr’s often- modulation almost recall the conventions On April 25, 2014, an audience of students, performed completion of the Requiem from of classical composition, despite dissonant faculty, and Ithaca community members ex- 1792. Instead of fi lling out thinly orchestrat- interruptions that insist upon the non-ar- perienced a performance of Georg Friedrich ed, sketched passages in the “Tuba Mirum,” rival of the modulation at a new tonal center. Haas’s Seven Soundspaces on the Unfi nished “Recordare,” and “Domine Jesu” movements, Fragments of W. A. Mozart’s Requiem in D Haas demands that these portions of the work Haas’ unapologetically contemporary addi- Minor (2005), sponsored in part by the In- tions to the Requiem fragments are in fact stitute for German Cultural Studies. Under clearly in conversation with late-eighteenth the direction of Michel Galante, Cornell century aesthetic norms informing Mozart’s orchestral musicians as well as members composition. The fi fth soundspace uses mi- of Cornell’s University Chorus and Glee metic effects to paint the sounds of death Club (both directed by Robert Isaacs) joined and dying: an unstable heartbeat, breathing, the Argento Chamber Ensemble and vocal a ventilator, and perhaps even an electro- soloists Judith Kellock, Ivy Walz, Thom cardiogram. Haas’ use of musical mimesis Baker, and David Neal on the stage of complements the musical pictorialism of Bailey Hall. This unique combination of Mozart’s fragments, evident for instance student and professional performers pro- in the illuminating orchestral and choral vided the vocal and instrumental power moment of the passage “…et lux perpet- necessary for the execution of Haas’ ambi- ua luceat eis” (“…and let perpetual light tious ‘soundspaces’ (Klangräume) and the shine on them”) in the “Introit” section. demanding fragments of Wolfgang Ama- be executed in their incomplete arrangement. deus Mozart’s unfi nished Requiem (1791). Despite Haas’ insistence that his Klangräume In the “Recordare” section, this posed a par- and Mozart’s Requiem constitute “two sepa- Haas presented brief introductory remarks ticularly diffi cult task for the quartet of fea- rate works by two separate composers,” dis- prior to the concert, in which he challenged tured soloists, who at some points seemed junctions between soundspace and fragment the audience to hear the Requiem fragments to be singing tonally challenging passages that result from the performance recall the on their own terms and to experience the with almost no accompaniment from the sublime sonic contrasts that preoccupied emptiness of the music left unfi nished due orchestra. Other movements such as the Mozart and his contemporaries. Ultimately, to Mozart’s untimely death. With regards “Confutatis” and “Lacrymosa” were also Haas’ Klangräume give one pause in con- to his own soundspaces, Haas expressed a intentionally left unfi nished—quite con- templating the possibility of the uncanny re- hope of capturing Mozart’s mental state in spicuously in the case of the “Confutatis,” turn of a forlorn sublime precisely by making the days preceding his death, during which with its tonally unresolved, ‘open’ ending. currently invisible topoi (e.g., death) once the Requiem was composed. Haas also again musically visible. (Alexander Brown) stated that he wanted to question the pres- Interspersed between these fragments were ent epoch’s “approach to death,” accord- Haas’ soundspaces. The fi rst of these—be- ing to which death and dying are often rel- tween Mozart’s “Dies irae” and “Tuba mi-

Daniel Kahn and Jake Shulman- the Jewish Studies Pro- Ment gram and co-sponsored by the Departments of March 6, 2014 Near Eastern Studies, Anthropology, and Ger- The evening of March 6 at the Big Red man Studies as well as Barn was dedicated to Klezmer music per- the Institute for German formed by Daniel Kahn and Jake Shulman- Cultural Studies, the Ment. The program included old as well as Institute of European original songs performed in Yiddish, Eng- Studies, and the Cor- lish, German, and Russian, displaying a nell Klezmer Ensem- mixture of Klezmer, radical Yiddish song, ble. (Andreea Mascan) political cabaret, and punk folk genres. For more details on While Kahn gave the audience a taste of his Daniel Kahn & The dark and humorous storytelling, Shulman- Painted Bird: http:// Ment performed Romanian Klezmer songs he on a Fulbright grant and studying Romanian www.paintedbird.de/ learned while living in northeastern Romania violin styles. The event was presented by 15 The Ambiguity of Virtue: ish fugitives emigrating from Germany to the to have been that she and Cohen were de- Gertrude van Tijn and Netherlands. Among other positions, she held ceived by Nazi-Hauptsturmführer Klaus the Fate of the Dutch Jews during the post of secretary at a farm school in North Barbie into releasing a list of names and World War II Holland where German Jewish fugitives were addresses of Jewish boys and young men. trained in agricultural work and a variety of April 29, 2014 crafts in preparation for emigration to Pales- tine. She was also involved in the organization Bernard Wasserstein, Harriet & Ulrich E. of the trip of the Dora, a ship transporting sev- Meyer Professor Emeritus of Modern Eu- eral hundreds of fugitives to Palestine in 1939. ropean Jewish History at the University of Chicago, presented his most recent book Wasserstein pointed out that when the Neth- in a talk co-sponsored by the Jewish Stud- erlands were occupied by Nazi-Germany, ies Program, the Department of History, van Tijn refused to fl ee to Great Britain, and the Institute for German Cultural Stud- though she was given the chance to do so. ies at Cornell. His work, titled The Ambi- Instead, she stayed and continued her work guity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the for the Joint Distribution Committee and Fate of the Dutch Jews (Harvard University the Dutch Refugee Committee throughout Press, 2014) follows the life of Gertrude van the war. He estimated that over the course Tijn, a Dutch Jewish woman who worked of a decade from 1933 to 1944, van Tijn for the Jewish Council in Amsterdam dur- was directly or indirectly responsible for the ing the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. emigration of approximately 22,000 Jews. Cohen and van Tijn had requested permis- sion to reopen the aforementioned farm Using van Tijn’s life and work as an ex- Wasserstein compared van Tijn’s approach school, and Barbie pretended to grant their ample, Wasserstein questioned and com- to her work for the Jewish Council to that request. However, he instead rounded up plicated Hannah Arendt’s criticism of the of her colleague David Cohen, chairman and deported most of the listed fugitives. Jewish Councils under National Socialism of the Refugee Committee. While Cohen and their role in carrying out the Holocaust, was both known and criticized for select- Van Tijn herself was arrested in 1943 and by detailing the constraints and circum- ing individual Jewish citizens for deporta- sent to the internment camp in Westerbork stances under which van Tijn was work- tion, van Tijn consistently refused to single and later to the Bergen-Belsen concentration ing and the risks she took in order to do her out individuals, a stance that Wasserstein camp. In an exchange of Jewish emigrants for utmost to help her fellow Jewish citizens. interpreted as a way of holding onto as Germans living in Palestine, she managed to much of her moral integrity as possible. escape to safety in 1944, but continued her ef- Wasserstein described how van Tijn had forts on behalf of refugees and returned to the worked since the early 1930s to assist Jew- Accordingly, van Tijn’s greatest regret seems Netherlands after the war. (Hannah Müller)

Incoming Guests of IGCS

IGCS is very pleased to welcome Prof. Dr. the body politic; E.T.A. Hoffmann; Hein- (2011); the Ethel Matala de Mazza as our Humboldt rich von Kleist, and Georg Büchner, among Carl Amery University exchange professor for the fi rst many others. Professor Matala de Mazza Prize (2013). weeks of Sep- will be presenting at the fi rst colloquium He will be tember 2014. on Friday, September 5, at 3:00, with a here to present Professor Ma- paper entitled “Fabelhafte Macht: Louis his new novel tala de Mazza’s Marin liest Jean de la Fontaine.” For the (due out in current research full line up of this Fall’s colloquia, please spring 2015) focuses on the see the poster included in these pages. as the forth- poetics of the coming fi lm small as a lit- (spring 2015) erary mode he co-wrote of negotiating with Berlin modernity’s school fi lmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler: self-inscription. In April 2015, IGCS is delighted to wel- Die Lügen der Sieger [The Victors’ Lies]. She has published extensively, including the come Ulrich Peltzer as Writer-in-Resi- monographs Der verfaßte Körper. Zum Pro- dence. The author of fi ve novels, a book jekt einer organischen Gemeinschaft in der on poetics, and co-author of several Politischen Romantik (1999) and Dichtung fi lm scripts, Ulrich Peltzer has won most of als Schau-Spiel. Zur Poetologie des jungen German’s biggest literary prizes: the Bre- Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1995), as well as men Literary Prize (2003); the Berlin Lit- essays on the cold war; the construction of erary Prize (2008); the Heinrich Böll Prize Radical Thought on the Margin II

October 4-5, 2013 Politics in Civil Rights Historiography.” In gories, by now to a large extent absorbed into his interpretation, the preponderance of the neoliberal discourses of diversity, Puar sug- The Cornell Theory Reading Group, in romantic narrative has occasioned an ironic gested the Deleuzian concept of assemblage collaboration with the Princeton Theory narrative to negate and resist it. Terry sees as a more dynamic framework for understand- Reading Group, hosted the event, “Radi- this ironic emplotment as itself manifest in ing how those different categories interact. cal Thought on the Margins II,” the second a paradoxical combination of two distinct of a two-part conference organized by indi- phenomena: on the one hand, scholars such With disability as the central category of vidual members of Theory Reading Groups as Leon Litwack and some stars of black her inquiry, Puar argued that the disabil- at the two universities. The fi rst conference, youth culture represent white supremacy as ity of white, Euro-American, middle-class subjects, when foregrounded and spectacularized in media narra- tives of overcoming, normalizes the systematic debility and disen- franchisement of racialized and economically underprivileged oth- ers. She drew attention to the fact that 80% of so-called people with disabilities worldwide are disabled as a result of war, forced migra- tion, and colonial occupation, and should thus be described as debili- tated by political and economic cir- cumstances rather than as disabled.

Puar concluded her talk by stress- ing the need for disability studies to overcome its Euro-American-biased biomedical rights discourse and to establish links to issues of global health. Rather than reproduce the uneven distribution of resources by “Radical Thought on the Margins” was held ineradicably permanent; on the other hand, depoliticizing the results of armed confl icts May 2-3, 2013 at Princeton University; the incorporation of post-structuralist criti- as disability in other locations, an assemblage dialogue continued with the conference on cism in African-American Studies leads approach to disability could, according to October 4-5, 2013 at Cornell University. to an equation of racial signifi cation with Puar, help reveal the ways in which debility “racism” and a hermeneutics of suspicion and disability produce and relate to each other. Brandon Terry (UC Chicago/Harvard) that denigrates collective political action. (Jette Gindner) opened the fi rst panel and began his presenta- tion by sketching out his ongoing, larger re- While an ironic emplotment may have been In the fi rst talk of the second panel, “History at search project: Drawing on Hayden White’s helpful in unmasking the epistemic and the Margins: An Interpretation of the Mayan account of historiography, Terry explores ideological problems of the romantic nar- Caste War,” Ana Sabau (Princeton) explored how the narrative emplotments of romance, rative of the Civil Rights Movement, Terry the presence and absence of maps of the Yu- tragedy, and irony have shaped the under- argued that it runs the risk of falling into catan Pensinsula made by the Mexican gov- standing of the Civil Rights Movement as serious contradictions and tipping into “ra- ernment during the Yucatan Caste War. Sabau an exemplary moment in black political cial paranoia,” ultimately revealing itself as was specifi cally interested in reading the way history. Romantic emplotment, which nar- politically limiting in its forms of negation. in which these maps of the Yucatan Penin- rates history as the becoming of unities or sula, commissioned by the newly emerging, the realization of ideas, has, according to The second speaker was Jasbir K. Puar (Rut- European-centered Mexican Government, Terry, thus far dominated discourse, yet its gers/Society of the Humanities at Cornell). leave blank exactly those areas of the Yucat- representation of the Civil Rights Move- Puar’s talk, “Affective Politics: States of De- an Peninsula that remained in control of the ment as consensual and organized around bility and Capacity,” gave an overview of her Mayan rebels during the Yucatan Caste War. the central fi gure of Martin Luther King, Jr. ongoing book project and its interventions has marginalized both the movement’s di- into both disability studies and queer theory. Sabau argued that the absence of any ac- verging strands as well as King’s investment Drawing on recent theorizations of affect, ma- knowledgement of Mayan habitation and in egalitarian and anti-imperial struggles. teriality, and post-humanism, Puar proposed civilization in these blank spaces actually an alternative to a current impasse in theories indicates the presence of a political narra- After this introduction, Terry honed in on of intersectionality. While the latter depend tive that fi rst established the way in which the focus of his presentation, “Irony and its upon the assumption of stable identity cate- the Mexican government conceived of and 17 defi ned itself. According to this narrative, development of the Trotskyist notion of dual methods to communicate their political agen- everything touched by the “savage” Indians power in the writings of Zavaleta to indi- das. These means were, above all, aesthetic, was erased by the central authorities com- cate how he adopts and applies the idea to embedded in magazine covers, images, and missioning the map and, thus, was literally the context of Latin America, specifi cally to layout. Through an analysis of these images not written into the country’s self-concep- Bolivia. Zavaleta develops this notion of dual and forms, Rentzou suggested that the maga- tion. Only those areas, Sabau argued, that power, conceptualizing the relation between zine expounded a non-humanist universal- fi t neatly into the narrative promoted by the an established political government and ism, confi guring the category of the “human” central government – that of progress and the movements of social uprising, to show how as polymorphic. Central to her analysis was development of enlightenment civilization a political space can be created apart from the magazine’s cover art, all of which depict – were written into the cartography and de- the dominant form of political governance, images of a Minotaur. The shifting depictions veloping narrative of the newly westernized which possesses a sovereign autonomy. of this hybrid human/animal fi gure over the country. The failure to map such areas, Sabau magazine’s history suggest a universalism argued, is indicative of the way in which the Draper argued that Zavaleta’s reworking grounded in change rather than human fi xity. Yucatan Caste War was relegated into the of the notion of dual power can be applied margins of history until it could be reintegrat- to Bolivia today in order to make sense of Nick Nesbitt concluded the panel with his ed into a more general historical narrative. proletariat struggles against dominant state presentation, “Fragments of a Universal powers. This application, Draper explained, History: Capitalism, Mass Revolution and In his paper, “Marxism and Indigenismo would not explode or attempt to overturn the Idea of Equality in the Black Jacobins.” Reconsidered,” Gavin Arnall (Princeton) the state, but would attempt to work with Through an analysis of The Black Jacobins: considered and reconsidered the sometimes- the state in order to integrate new inter- Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domin- troubled relationship between Marxism and ests into the state in a dialectic process. go Revolution (1938), the Trotskyist writer Indigenismo in South America, specifi cally (Stephen Klemm) C.L.R. James’ famous history of the Haitian in Peru. Arnall argued that many Marxists revolution, Nesbitt suggests – against a com- rue what they consider a “missed encoun- Naoki Sakai led the third panel of the con- mon conception of the text’s anti-universalist ter” between the proletariat in several South ference, presenting from his work and aims – that there is in fact a model of univer- American countries and the Indigenismo, eponymous book project, “Dislocation of salist history presented in the work, linking who have failed to come together in a col- the West.” Sakai’s initial remarks targeted the Haitian revolution to the revolutions in lective and unifi ed class struggle. While the idiosyncrasy of the term “West”: While France and Russia, from which it is often de- the proletariat and the Indigenismo share a “the West” immediately evokes a topological tached due to a Eurocentric bias. C.L.R. James’ common economic plight, and hence, Ar- and cartographic designation or placement, universal model is based on three elements nall argued, ought to be prime candidates the term’s indexical function always renders common to all revolutionary movements: the for collective action, the cultural, linguis- “the West only a West.” Furthermore, as a existence of a leader, a disenfranchised mass, tic, and geographical (urban/rural) differ- historical construct, “the West,” indicates and ideas that possess a historical force. ences between the groups often occasioned, mores, traditions, ethnicities, and civiliza- These elements are to be found in all three of from a Marxist perspective, a missed op- tions, while producing other geographic des- the aforementioned revolutions. Conforming portunity for large-scale collective action. ignations such as the Middle or the Far East to a universal theory of revolution, Haiti is, in from its assumed vantage point in the center. this reading, not a geographical, cultural and Arnall read those occasions in which individ- historical outlier, but part of universal history. uals have been able to transcend the differ- Citing Antonio Gramsci, Sakai related (Matteo Calla) ences between these groups, serving both as such compartmentalization of the planet to linguistic and cultural translators, as opportu- global hegemonic confi gurations. Today, nities to bridge the gap between Marxism and the myth of the West along with its ancil- Indigenismo, in order to locate a new Marxism lary presumption of whiteness have become unique to specifi c historical and local condi- increasingly less certain in both unity and tions. This encounter, Arnall argued, fosters identity, as Sakai demonstrated through his an Indo-American socialism, which does not reading of J. M. Coetzee’s 1999 novel, Dis- merely apply a European model onto a given grace. While the novel’s white protagonist set of historical conditions, but rather seeks David Lury assumes a reifi ed positional- to create a socialism that is locally and histor- ity of the West as naturally independent and ically determined. Such Marxism would take separated from “the Rest” (Stuart Hall), his the demands of the Indigenismo as well as the situation becomes destabilized by the radi- proletariat into equal account, modifying it- cal changes “whiteness” is undergoing in self to the specifi c historical situation at hand. post-Apartheid South Africa and beyond. (Anna Horakova) In her talk “Staging Change: Dual Power, Motley States, and the turn to the Commons Efthymia Rentzou’s talk, entitled “Beyond (from René Zavaleta Mercado to Raquel the Human: Universalism, Humanism, and the Gutiérrez),” Susana Draper (Princeton) French Avant-garde of the 1930s,” examined analyzed the situation of dual power in po- the politics of the French Surrealist literary litical and historical processes in Chile and magazine, Minotaur. Because the magazine Bolivia in the 1970s as explicated in the was not allowed to explicitly discuss politics, works of Rene Zavaleta. Draper traced the Rentzou proposed that its authors used indirect Conference in Honor of Allen W. Wood

German Philosophy & the Ethics of Belief

Friday, October 31 2014 - Saturday, November 1 2014 Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University 218 Goldwin Smith Hall

ROBERT M. ADAMS Rutgers University R. LANIER ANDERSON Stanford University

MAIN SPEAKERS MAIN MARCIA BARON Indiana University ANDREW CHIGNELL Cornell University REBECCA COPENHAVER Lewis and Clark College FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE GO TO http://philevents.org/event/show/13724 PAUL GUYER Brown University DESMOND HOGAN Princeton University BÉATRICE LONGUENESSE New York University ALLEN W. WOOD Indiana University, Bloomington

Sponsors • Indiana University-Bloomington, Philosophy Department • Central New York HumaniƟ es Corridor, from a grant by the Andrew W. Mellon FoundaƟ on • Society for the HumaniƟ es, Cornell • InsƟ tute for German Cultural Studies, Cornell • Susan Linn Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell • Indiana University-Bloomington, Department of Germanic Studies

Organisers: ANDREW CHIGNELL Cornell University / LARA DENIS Agnes ScoƩ College / DESMOND HOGAN Princeton University 19 g n The Poet and the University: i

m Stefan George among the Scholars e l F l September 26-27, 2014, Cornell University u a

P A. D. White House d n a l h a d n e h o H e w U er t

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 1:30pm Paul Fleming

Organized by Pe German, and Comparative Literature, Cornell “Th e Poet and the State of Academia” SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 2:45pm Robert Norton German, Notre Dame “Plato and the George Circle” 9:30am Ernst Osterkamp German, Humboldt University-Berlin 4:30pm Peter Uwe Hohendahl “Th e Poet as the Redeemer of Culture: German, and Comparative Literature, Cornell Friedrich Gundolf’s Goethe” “Critic or Prophet? Th e George Circle and Friedrich Nietzsche” 10:45am Eva Geulen German, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main “Th e Other Beginning: Th e George Circle’s Discovery of Hölderlin and the Place of Goethe”

1:30pm Elke Siegel German, Cornell “Poetry, Politics, and Friendship in Kommerell’s Classicism”

2:45pm Carsten Strathausen German, University of Missouri Sponsored by Cornell University’s “Th e George Circle and Biopolitics” Institute for German Cultural Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, Society for the Humanities, 4:30pm Russell Berman departments of German Studies, Philosophy, and German, Stanford University, Comparative Literature and former President of the Modern Language Association “Political Th ought in the George Circle: Edgar Salin and Political Economy Additional information about all events listed is available on our website: http://igcs.cornell.edu. Event listings will be updated throughout the semester. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please contact Olga Petro- va ([email protected]). Institute for German Cultural Studies Archived copies of past newsletters are available elec- Cornell University tronically at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/han- 726 University Avenue dle/1813/10777

Ithaca, NY 14850 Contributions to German Culture News are welcome. If you would like an event listed or have a brief review or article to submit, please con- http://igcs.cornell.edu/ tact Olga Petrova ([email protected]).