Abstract:This article argues that the contemporary novels Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt by Olga Grjasnowa (2012) and 1000 Serpentinen Angst by Olivia Wenzel (2020) critically interrogate the normative constitution of the human from the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Through their employment of two key motifs, namely sexuality and grief, the texts render visible forms of dehumanization and their material effects on certain bodies in accordance with what Judith Butler calls a “modulation of grievability.” Both texts also perform a queer utopia by constituting non-violent modes of being-in-the-world through an aesthetic practice that I describe as ästhetisches Eigenwissen.
{"title":"Valences of the Human: Grief and Queer Utopia in Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt and Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Serpentinen Angst","authors":"Denise Henschel","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that the contemporary novels Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt by Olga Grjasnowa (2012) and 1000 Serpentinen Angst by Olivia Wenzel (2020) critically interrogate the normative constitution of the human from the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Through their employment of two key motifs, namely sexuality and grief, the texts render visible forms of dehumanization and their material effects on certain bodies in accordance with what Judith Butler calls a “modulation of grievability.” Both texts also perform a queer utopia by constituting non-violent modes of being-in-the-world through an aesthetic practice that I describe as ästhetisches Eigenwissen.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"73 2 1","pages":"271 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83431378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev003
Ervin Malakaj
{"title":"Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber. Precarious Intimacies: The Politics of Touch in Contemporary Western European Cinema","authors":"Ervin Malakaj","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"280 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72392038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev001
H. Druxes
{"title":"Anne Fuchs. Precarious Times: Temporality and History in Modern German Culture","authors":"H. Druxes","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81958342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article looks closely at how the German director René Pollesch incorporates quantum physics into his theatrical practice. I argue that the double-slit experiment that Pollesch refers to in his play Probleme Probleme Probleme (2019) is key to understanding his non-representational theatre. I analyze the deep implications of this experiment for his theatre with respect to two aspects: (1) I highlight the fact that his interest in the writings of feminist and philosopher of science Donna Haraway is connected to a critique of representational theatre with its specific conceptualization of “the Human” as a Cartesian subject; and (2) in line with feminist and physicist Karen Barad, I discuss how the double-slit experiment, understood as a queer phenomenon, helps Pollesch rework central categories of drama and representational theatre. Subsequently, this allows me to conclude that Pollesch continues Bertolt Brecht’s project of a political “theatre for the scientific age” under new conditions. His theatre is a political theatre for the “technoscientific age” where “the Human” as opposed to its “Others” no longer exists. The term diffraction is key for understanding my analysis because it functions as an analytical tool that connects the aforementioned aspects. Moreover, it also describes my method of making visible the pattern that comes into being when Pollesch meets the double-slit experiment, or, more generally speaking, when theatre meets quantum physics.
{"title":"Theatre Meets Quantum Physics: René Pollesch’s Theatre for the Age of Technoscience","authors":"Teresa Kovacs","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article looks closely at how the German director René Pollesch incorporates quantum physics into his theatrical practice. I argue that the double-slit experiment that Pollesch refers to in his play Probleme Probleme Probleme (2019) is key to understanding his non-representational theatre. I analyze the deep implications of this experiment for his theatre with respect to two aspects: (1) I highlight the fact that his interest in the writings of feminist and philosopher of science Donna Haraway is connected to a critique of representational theatre with its specific conceptualization of “the Human” as a Cartesian subject; and (2) in line with feminist and physicist Karen Barad, I discuss how the double-slit experiment, understood as a queer phenomenon, helps Pollesch rework central categories of drama and representational theatre. Subsequently, this allows me to conclude that Pollesch continues Bertolt Brecht’s project of a political “theatre for the scientific age” under new conditions. His theatre is a political theatre for the “technoscientific age” where “the Human” as opposed to its “Others” no longer exists. The term diffraction is key for understanding my analysis because it functions as an analytical tool that connects the aforementioned aspects. Moreover, it also describes my method of making visible the pattern that comes into being when Pollesch meets the double-slit experiment, or, more generally speaking, when theatre meets quantum physics.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":"289 - 307"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89655435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev002
Ulrich Plass
{"title":"Shuang Xu. Prekäre Kollektive: Das Gemeinschafts-Denken bei Kafka und Derrida","authors":"Ulrich Plass","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"86 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84110600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Under the pressures of neoliberal society, Maren Ade’s protagonists struggle to form and maintain human relationships, leaving them alienated and alone. Kitsch animal ornaments and potted plants seem to offer compensatory companionship to these lonely individuals, but this article argues that non-human others are used by Ade in more complex ways to decentre the normative idea of the human underpinning the social and economic order. It draws on postanthropocentric thought to read Ade’s three features to date—Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (2003), Alle Anderen (2009), and Toni Erdmann (2016)—tracing the potential for becoming or becoming-with as a means of undoing socially prescribed identity and acknowledging our entanglement with non-human life.
{"title":"Undoing the Human in the Films of Maren Ade","authors":"D. Osborne","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Under the pressures of neoliberal society, Maren Ade’s protagonists struggle to form and maintain human relationships, leaving them alienated and alone. Kitsch animal ornaments and potted plants seem to offer compensatory companionship to these lonely individuals, but this article argues that non-human others are used by Ade in more complex ways to decentre the normative idea of the human underpinning the social and economic order. It draws on postanthropocentric thought to read Ade’s three features to date—Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (2003), Alle Anderen (2009), and Toni Erdmann (2016)—tracing the potential for becoming or becoming-with as a means of undoing socially prescribed identity and acknowledging our entanglement with non-human life.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"18 1","pages":"308 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75045231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev004
C. Breger
by which to care enough to envision a better future unburdened by the violence of the present. I was particularly moved by the authors’ generous acknowledgement section, in which they expand on their own collaborative research and writing practice that shaped their book. In their own collaboration, care, and indeed intellectual intimacy practice, the authors see a means by which to resist, survive in, and push back against the forces of the neoliberal university. Their scholarly practices, their relation to the academy, and the subject matter to which they turn in their book all take on personal contours by which the authors model affirmative personal-scholarly connections to texts far removed from their own lived experience. To me, it is also very vital that this excellent book not only is available in paperback, hardback, and e-book format suitable for various academic and personal libraries but can also be obtained via open access made available through the Northwestern University website in collaboration with a number of institutions. Precarious Intimacies will become standard reading for scholars of Euro pean cinema studies. Its prose is accessible, its active engagement with scholarly and primary sources is varied and exciting, and its scope is broad. As such, it would also be an excellent text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses. The book will certainly be part of reading lists for the courses I teach in the future.
{"title":"Leila Mukhida. Sensitive Subjects: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary German and Austrian Cinema","authors":"C. Breger","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.rev004","url":null,"abstract":"by which to care enough to envision a better future unburdened by the violence of the present. I was particularly moved by the authors’ generous acknowledgement section, in which they expand on their own collaborative research and writing practice that shaped their book. In their own collaboration, care, and indeed intellectual intimacy practice, the authors see a means by which to resist, survive in, and push back against the forces of the neoliberal university. Their scholarly practices, their relation to the academy, and the subject matter to which they turn in their book all take on personal contours by which the authors model affirmative personal-scholarly connections to texts far removed from their own lived experience. To me, it is also very vital that this excellent book not only is available in paperback, hardback, and e-book format suitable for various academic and personal libraries but can also be obtained via open access made available through the Northwestern University website in collaboration with a number of institutions. Precarious Intimacies will become standard reading for scholars of Euro pean cinema studies. Its prose is accessible, its active engagement with scholarly and primary sources is varied and exciting, and its scope is broad. As such, it would also be an excellent text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses. The book will certainly be part of reading lists for the courses I teach in the future.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81350248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In queer German director Monika Treut’s film Ghosted (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.
{"title":"Queering the Screen: Spectral Figures and German-Taiwanese Encounters in Monika Treut’s Ghosted","authors":"Qingyang Zhou","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.3.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.3.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In queer German director Monika Treut’s film Ghosted (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"6 1","pages":"251 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78431153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Early Ausdruckstanz theory often compared Ausdruckstanz to a language to explain how Ausdruckstanz conveys the deeply personal, self-expressive message to its audience. Using Susanne Langer’s study on expression in art and George Lakoffand Mark Johnson’s work on conceptual metaphors in tandem with early dance theory and Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II, I argue for a conceptual metaphorical understanding of dance as language. Because dance possesses a physical, indexical connection to its meaning, the language of dance consitututes a series of conceptual, rather than linguistic, metaphors that explain how dance conveys meaning through symbolic form, which for Wigman’s Hexentanz II, I demonstrate, is a radically feminist message. Then, turning from the production of meaning in dance towards the perception of said meaning, using Wigman’s theory of the dancer’s eye, I show how the objective of Ausdruckstanz forms a bond between a dancer and audience, incorporating the audience into the dance and creating a new kinesthetic and aesthetic experience. With this goal in mind, Wigman’s Hexentanz II situates itself in the context of other early avant-garde and modernist movements that sought a complete re-evaluation of perception and aesthetic ideals as a response to modernity.
{"title":"The Language of Dance, the Dancer’s Eye, and Aesthetic Experience in Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II","authors":"C. Tovey","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Early Ausdruckstanz theory often compared Ausdruckstanz to a language to explain how Ausdruckstanz conveys the deeply personal, self-expressive message to its audience. Using Susanne Langer’s study on expression in art and George Lakoffand Mark Johnson’s work on conceptual metaphors in tandem with early dance theory and Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II, I argue for a conceptual metaphorical understanding of dance as language. Because dance possesses a physical, indexical connection to its meaning, the language of dance consitututes a series of conceptual, rather than linguistic, metaphors that explain how dance conveys meaning through symbolic form, which for Wigman’s Hexentanz II, I demonstrate, is a radically feminist message. Then, turning from the production of meaning in dance towards the perception of said meaning, using Wigman’s theory of the dancer’s eye, I show how the objective of Ausdruckstanz forms a bond between a dancer and audience, incorporating the audience into the dance and creating a new kinesthetic and aesthetic experience. With this goal in mind, Wigman’s Hexentanz II situates itself in the context of other early avant-garde and modernist movements that sought a complete re-evaluation of perception and aesthetic ideals as a response to modernity.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"85 1","pages":"167 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74320996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article focuses on Thomas Mann’s autobiographical essay about his dog in the light of his early fiction and wartime journalism. Herr und Hund represents not only an idyllic retreat from troubled times but also an ongoing engagement with themes central to Mann’s creative prose and cultural politics, including distinctions between human reason and animal passions, alleged racial differences among humans, and relations between nature and civilization. Issues currently cordoned off into the discrete categories of animal, environmental, and critical race studies inform one another in Mann’s multi-faceted essay. Herr und Hund marks both an end to the reflections that preoccupied Mann during the war and their continuation by other means, revisiting themes that inspire his earliest prose and will continue to inform his political thought and creative practice for years to come.
摘要:本文结合托马斯·曼早期的小说创作和战时新闻报道，对其关于爱犬的自传体散文进行了研究。Herr und Hund不仅代表了从混乱时期的田园诗般的撤退，而且还持续参与了曼恩创造性散文和文化政治的核心主题，包括人类理性与动物激情之间的区别，人类之间所谓的种族差异，以及自然与文明之间的关系。在曼恩多方面的文章中，目前被划分为动物、环境和关键种族研究等不同类别的问题相互联系。《人和人》标志着曼恩在战争期间的思考的结束，以及通过其他方式的延续，重新审视了激发他早期散文的主题，并将继续影响他未来几年的政治思想和创作实践。
{"title":"Of Mutts and Mann: The Mischling Theme in Herr und Hund","authors":"Todd Kontje","doi":"10.3138/seminar.58.2.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.58.2.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article focuses on Thomas Mann’s autobiographical essay about his dog in the light of his early fiction and wartime journalism. Herr und Hund represents not only an idyllic retreat from troubled times but also an ongoing engagement with themes central to Mann’s creative prose and cultural politics, including distinctions between human reason and animal passions, alleged racial differences among humans, and relations between nature and civilization. Issues currently cordoned off into the discrete categories of animal, environmental, and critical race studies inform one another in Mann’s multi-faceted essay. Herr und Hund marks both an end to the reflections that preoccupied Mann during the war and their continuation by other means, revisiting themes that inspire his earliest prose and will continue to inform his political thought and creative practice for years to come.","PeriodicalId":44556,"journal":{"name":"SEMINAR-A JOURNAL OF GERMANIC STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":"149 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82949497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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