GERMAN QUARTERLY最新文献

At least since the publication of Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement (2016), it has become commonplace to say that the climate crisis is also a crisis of the imagination. Policymakers and their publics find it difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise. For scholars dedicated to the study of German culture and works of imagination, this would seem to be our moment. But many of us are not quite sure how to seize it. We understand the urgency, but deeply ingrained habits of mind and discipline stand in our way. As Caroline Levine emphasizes, our commitment to critique has taught us to be wary of “instrumentality” in any form. But I would argue, it's precisely the instruments of our discipline that are needed now. For the past two years, I've been experimenting with ways to put my skillset to work for climate adaptation in the Netherlands and Germany. I can readily imagine that there are policy contexts where you could do the same with yours.

People in the Netherlands don't like to talk about managed retreat. Moving to higher terrain is one of the ways low-lying communities, even whole cities and regions, can and will adapt to sea level rise. That's important because the 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that scientists cannot rule out two meters of sea level rise by 2100 and five meters by 2150. Other climate scientists such as James Hansen and Michael Mann think it could be much more and much sooner. For a country that regards itself as “the safest delta in the world,” even though 26% of its densely populated terrain already lies below sea level—in some places as low as seven meters—the idea of managed retreat is at odds with its national narrative of an eternal and ongoing battle with the sea. Dutch engineers boast that they can take on another ten meters of sea level rise. Retreat, they say, is for losers.

There are some Dutch climate scientists and ecologically-oriented water management experts who worry that the Netherlands is locking itself into maintaining an inflexible technocratic system that can't keep up with accelerated sea level rise. Since 2016, they've tried various strategies to keep retreat on the table, with moderate success. Landscape architects and designers have helped by offering visions of what an adaptive, inundated Netherlands might look like. The engineering lobby wants none of it. Recent opinion pieces in prominent newspapers suggest that those who advocate for retreat and cast doubt on Dutch engineering prowess are committing landverraad (treason).

I've been tracking the conversation on managed retreat in the Netherlands for the past six years. I was intrigued by a phenomenon that manifests in many other regions as well: low-level awareness of the urgency of climate change, coupled with a supreme confidence in technical solutions, bolstered by political inertia. As I spoke with climate and water professionals in the Netherlands, I realized that

Wie werden Emotionen im Kontext des Artenverlusts eingesetzt? In welchem Ausmaß sind sie steuerbar und für welche Zwecke werden sie genutzt? Anhand des Beispiels der Stellerschen Seekuh fragt der Artikel nach Formen der Trauer im Umgang mit der Auslöschung und den Überresten des marinen Säugetiers. Die Stellersche Seekuh wurde Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts an den Rändern frühmoderner Seewege im Nordpazifik entdeckt und zu Nahrungszwecken ausgerottet. Das Tier ist Teil einer speziesübergreifenden Ausrottungsgeschichte und zeigt die Verbindung der Vernichtung nicht-menschlicher Lebewesen und indigener Gemeinschaften auf. Mithilfe der Seekuh wird untersucht, wessen Auslöschung überhaupt Trauer erfährt und wie diese mithilfe der in naturhistorischen Museen zusammengesetzten Knochengerüste her- und dargestellt wird. Fragen nach der Verbindung von Emotion und imperialen Machtstrukturen spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle, wie die von Sammlungsinstitutionen genutzten Erzählungen letzter Individuen, tragischer Abgesänge und die Kommodifizierung der Überreste des Tieres. Abschließend wird Trauer als Möglichkeit berücksichtigt, über Artengrenzen hinweg zu verbinden.

Animals enjoyed an active afterlife in late-nineteenth-century pro-animal texts in Germany. Drawing on a number of primary texts and recent scholarship on the anti-vivisection movement, this article argues that remembering, mourning, and haunting by animals is part of a gendered discourse on animal rights that is associated in particular with sentiment and with maternity. This is illustrated with reference to Marie Espérance von Schwartz's Gemma, oder Tugend und Laster (1877), a sentimental anti-vivisection novella in which deceased animals and women return to punish their abusers or shore up the resistant stance of the living. Viewing Schwartz's fictional novella in the context of non-fictional pro-animal works, including Ernst Grysanowski's Die Vivisection, ihr wissenschaftlicher Werth und ihre ethische Berechtigung (1877) and Ignaz Bregenzer's Thier-Ethik: Darstellung der sittlichen und rechtlichen Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Thier (1894), allows me, by means of contrast, to highlight its gendered dimension.