Agonistic Reading: Kleist’s Aesthetics of Temptation

ABSTRACT The anti-humanism of Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheater — wherein the ideal of grace is supposed to make visible mechanical forces devoid of human self-consciousness — takes the form of a temptation. The text nevertheless has a poetological function inasmuch as temptation lies at the genesis of aesthetic experience for Kleist. The paper examines the potentialities of a form of agonistic reading in response to the challenges posed by Kleist’s aesthetics of temptation, and concludes by considering Die Marquise von O.... as an elaborate ritualistic manipulation designed to integrate transgressive desire into the ethics of civil society.