Lines that reduce : biography, palms, borders
- Through various cases and instances, this essay opens with the question of biography and the demands of its form: that is, biography's attempt to reduce historical totalities to the page in moments of sudden condensation. It then introduces the figure of Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986), a doctor and later hand reader and sexologist, who appears on a diagram, constructed by Walter Benjamin in 1932, to map his life through his 'Urbekanntschaften' (primal acquaintances). It then seeks to transpose Benjamin's diagram into other linear forms, such as a family tree, a diagram of chemical affinity, and an astral chart, to add one: the diagram as a map of the hand. This opens up a number of temporal, historical, and epistemic reductions, or cases of reduction, in Wolff's work and beyond. It concludes with a particular moment in Wolff's biography - her arrest in 1933 and her escape to Paris - as a final instance of the line, as border.
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| Author: | Sam Dolbear |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-722543 |
| URL: | https://press.ici-berlin.org/doi/10.37050/ci-25/dolbear_lines-that-reduce.pdf |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_06 |
| ISBN: | 978-3-96558-041-1 |
| ISBN: | 978-3-96558-040-4 |
| ISSN: | 2627-731X |
| Parent Title (English): | The case for reduction / edited by Christoph F.E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger ; Cultural Inquiry ; 25 |
| Publisher: | ICI Press |
| Place of publication: | Berlin |
| Document Type: | Part of a Book |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2023/03/01 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2022 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2023/03/15 |
| Tag: | Benjamin, Walter: Pergamentheft Palmistry |
| GND Keyword: | Autobiografie; Benjamin, Walter; Berliner Chronik; Wolff, Charlotte; Handlesekunst |
| Page Number: | 17 |
| First Page: | 117 |
| Last Page: | 133 |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
| Sammlungen: | CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft |
| CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft / ICI Berlin | |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 |
