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If projection and transference represent similar terms that imply a fundamental form of ignorance, the aim of this investigation can not be to draw a sharp distinction between projection and transference. Of course, the dialectic of inside and outside doesn't play the central role in transference like it does in projection. In a certain way, the notion of projection concerns all forms of perception and seems to be wider than the notion of transference. But on the other hand, the notion of transference as a poetic act of creating metaphorical analogies seems to be wider than that of projection. My interest in the following lines lies not in the attempt to draw a valuable distinction between both terms, but to look at their interplay in a novel that discusses all forms of archaism, primitivism and regression, commonly linked with projection, a novel, that at the same time tries to give an explanation of the foundation of modern art. Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus offers an insight not only into the combination of projection and love, but also into ignorance as the common ground of projection and transference. I will therefore first try to determine the modernity of Thomas Mann's novel in regard to the abounding intertextual dimension that characterizes the text, and then closely examine the central scene of the novel, the confrontation between Adrian Leverkühn and the obscure figure of the devil.
Informed by scholarship on systems of ethnography, on animal studies as well as on German (post)colonialism, this article argues thus principally that Brehm's increasingly popular tales of exotic locales, soon included in high circulation magazines such as "Die Gartenlaube", in the end stand out not so much for their cultural engagement and educational-formative representation of human Otherness and difference. Instead, what makes Brehm's works most remarkable is their simultaneous and until now unnoticed popularization of non-human animals - both exotic and domestic - as part of a discursive formation of 'Germanness' and a European self-understanding. This article highlights in this context the extent in which readers find themselves wondering, given the sheer abundance of animal observations alongside a pervasive absence of humans, whether Brehm's travels constitute a failed foray into ethnography; or whether he intentionally shifted the narrative emphasis from humans to animals in order to strategically stage his explorations as a preparatory text for audiences of his later animals tales. What will ultimately be revealed in place of such seeming opposites is how the modes of perception of a German audience for both Brehm's human and animal subjects were affected through his works by almost interchangeable modes of ethnographic and zoographic representation. As a result, Brehm's works raise central questions about the synchronic and diachronic reception of his views on animals as humans and vice versa, all of which culminated in a distinct sense of superiority shared by Brehm and a receptive German audience. What impact this perception may then have had on ensuing German discourses on race, nation, and colonial expansion will be a final consideration of this article as it looks at Brehm's contemporary relevance in widely publicized events in Germany and the United States.
The nascent field of neuropsychoanalysis positions itself as a putative bridge between two »historically divided disciplines«. In this chapter, we address this attempt to bridge these two disciplines, through considering a particular scientific and conceptual debate that is taking place within this new field. Neuropsychoanalysis is a diverse and loosely defined interdisciplinary field that comprises the efforts of researchers and clinicians within several branches of both psychoanalysis and the neurosciences to construct a shared space of inquiry in which clinical concepts and findings can be correlated with neuronal data and models. While researchers differ in how they conceptualize the specific contours of this shared space, they tend to converge in their desire to figure out how Freudian concepts might be anchored through neurobiological and anatomico-functional investigations.
This thesis examines the literary output of German servicemen writers writing from the occupied territories of Europe in the period 1940-1944. Whereas literary-biographical studies and appraisals of the more significant individual writers have been written, and also a collective assessment of the Eastern front writers, this thesis addresses in addition the German literary responses in France and Greece, as being then theatres of particular cultural/ideological attention. Original papers of the writer Felix Hartlaub were consulted by the author at the Deutsches Literatur Archiv (DLA) at Marbach. Original imprints of the wartime works of the subject writers are referred to throughout, and citations are from these. As all the published works were written under conditions of wartime censorship and, even where unpublished, for fear of discovery written in oblique terms, the texts were here examined for subliminal authorial intention. The critical focus of the thesis is on literary quality: on aesthetic niveau, on applied literary form, and on integrity of authorial intention. The thesis sought to discover: (1) the extent of the literary output in book-length forms. (2) the auspices and conditions under which this literary output was produced. (3) the publication history and critical reception of the output. The thesis took into account, inter alia: (1) occupation policy as it pertained locally to the writers’ remit; (2) the ethical implications of this for the writers; (3) the writers’ literary stratagems for negotiating the constraints of censorship.
Musil uses the word 'Dichter', 'poet', as a dignified title reserved for artists of great achievement (different from 'Schriftsteller', 'writer'). His use of the word emphasizes the importance of the specifically poetic qualities of literature (and of the poetic sensibility of criticism,) not as an idle objection to the contemporary merging of literary works with either pure sensation and feeling, or with other forms of discourse. Focusing on "Törless", as well as on Musil's notebooks and essays, this article shows how Musil understands the relationship between rational thinking and the latent ideas and thoughts that emerge within the poetic dimension (the 'other state of mind' or 'other condition.') This approach illuminates Musil's conception of "precision and soul" - the interlocking of sensitive perceptiveness and intellectual rigor - as a necessary pre-condition for valuable literature and valuable life.
Taking as starting point some collective volumes since the year 2000 which aspire to provide new views on narratology, this essay discusses the problem of how to conceive the history of narratology in a way that is more enlightening than the linear narrative used so far to tell this story. It lists some aspects which are neglected by the usual narrative and favors a decentered conception of narratology’s development.
During the 1930s through the 1940s and into the 1950s, Spanish and German presentations in opposition to ardent nationalism share strikingly common aesthetic and ideological strategies supporting claims to a transnational, international space. Specific examples of common geography, identity and language in German and Spanish presentations (theater, short stories, reports, essays, speeches and poetry) in Spain and Latin America by German (Regler, Renn, Uhse), Spanish (J. Bergamin, R. Alberti, M. Aub) and Latin American (D. Rivera, P. Neruda, C. Vallejo) intellectuals, artists and activists during the 1930s through the 1950s will be explored. For example, German-speaking audiences and artists in Spain and Mexico shared a common lived and aesthetic space as Spanish-speaking audiences and artists. Further, many German presentations were translated into Spanish and visa versa. Here, presentations in “Das Wort” and “El Mono Azul” in Spain as well as “Freies Deutschland/Alemania libre” in Mexico will be referenced in developing a sense of re-definition of the concept of ‘foreign’ and ‘commonness’ beyond simply nationality (tradition, history and geography) and language. The impetus for an alternative, international and even revolutionary ‘space’ (as defined by Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space) was produced in and through common Spanish and German strategies and realizations in their presentations. This Spanish-German example from the early/mid-part of the 20th century is a significant contribution to contemporary interdisciplinary discussions in the 21st century.
Around 1800, aesthetic debate suddenly places music at the very top in the hierarchy of the arts, even superseding poetry: This has become a commonplace not only in scholarly discourse. The protagonists of this re-arrangement of the artistic disciplines are Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck. In their programmatic texts, they state that music is to be free and absolute and stress its metaphysical quality and its close relation to the supernatural. Furthermore, music is supposed to be no longer dependent on the other arts, and music releases the listener or the musician from prosaic everyday life. As Wackenroder writes in Die Wunder der Tonkunst, […] [a]ll sickening thoughts which, according to Wackenroder, are the illness of mankind vanish with a piece of music, making our mind sane again. Literary romanticism here recurs to a long tradition that reaches back to the classical ages in Greece and Arabia: Music is used as a remedy for curing illnesses of various kinds. In classical antiquity, Apollo is the god of music, poetry and dancing as well as the god of healing. He was also named “Iatros” (physician) or Apollo Medicus. […] Orpheus as a bard and demigod was also said to be capable of curing diseases by means of his music. […] Thus, music in history is part of treating physical illness on the one hand, but on the other hand is more and more considered to provide a remedy especially for mental deficiencies. Music is meant to improve nervous disorders and sometimes it is even prescribed as a regular medicine. As we will see in Hoffmann’s text Die Genesung, there is a connection between the ritual healing processes in the temples of Aesculapius and the setting of the forest in which the old man regains his health.