GERMAN CULTURE NEWS CORNELL UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR GERMAN CULTURAL STUDIES \\ Ilifel :!IHI(J \',,1'1111(' \ 1// \'0 I RETROSPECTIVE OF GERMAN COLLOQUIUM FALL 1999 BERLIN, BEIJING AND BEYOND Franz Peter Hugdahl Stanley Corngold opened the fall colloquium series with "Something 10 do with the Truth: Kafka's Later Stories," Comgold, professor of German andComparnlive Literalureat Princeton University, examined Kafka's consciousness of writing as metaphysical longing and practical orientation: In the writer's work 10 create, against the falsily of the sensible world, an aura of truth. artistic pmctice becomes akind of ethical practice. In his prefatory remarks. Comgold posi tianed the wri ler' s endeavors in and against the contemporary stage of desire for cullural immortality. Kafka can be seen as a latemodem figure "between negative theologyand the medial archive," the transcendental desires of this metaphysical poet differ from and chal Ienge the satisfactions of a culture that finds infinity in the World Wide Web. In his paper. Corngold explores the renectivc quality of KalKa' s later texts that have made them resistant to easy interpretation. I-Ie detects a "Gnostic verve:' a striving for the eternal beyond the empirical self. but also a striving beyond philosophical contemplation, in stories such as "The Village Schoolmaster" as well as in aphorisms and diary entries. Following this thread. he identifies an "onto-graphico-Iogic" which demonstrales how a desire for transition may affect ethics. "I'his practical logic builds, in lhe malerial oftextual argument, a series oftransformation and negation. An everyday quarrel. for example. israised to the level of existenlial truth and then essentially disappears as something that does not (continued on pa/:t' II) BIDDY MARTIN NOMINATED PROVOST Cornell President Hunter R. Rawlings announced on February 2, 2000 that he will submil to the Executive Committee of lhe Roard of Trustees his nomination of Biddy (Carolyn A.)Martin as University PrOVOSt. effective July 1,2000. Martin will succeed Don M. Randel. who has been named the new president ofthe Uni versity of Chicago. "Biddy Martin has had an outstanding scholarly and leaching career at Cornell," said Rawlings. "She has excelled in every assignment entrusled to her care, and has won the admiration of faculty, students and staff throughout the university. Her most recent role as senior associate dean in the College of Ans and Sciences has given her substantial exposure to university-wide issues thaI will prove most valuable in her new role as provost. I look forward to working closely with her on a day-to-day basis as a colleague and a friend:' Martin expressed enlhusiasm on her nomination: "I am honored to have been asked to serve as Provost and delighted at the prospect ofworking with lhe president, the members of lhe cenlIai adntinistralion, and the (conrimm/ fin /X/fill' /5) Professor Jonathan MonrO('. Department ofComparalive Literature at Comell University and Direclor of the John S. Knight Writing Program. opened the conference. "Berlin. Beijing and Beyond: Cultural Politics Since 1989" on November 12, 1999 with a few prefatory remarks concerning the context ofthe conference's conception. Just lhree days after the tenth anniversary of "fall of the Berlin Wall" and almost six months since the same commemoralion of the Tiananmcn Square uprising, the conference was convened to consider the implications and consequences of those pivotal events within a diverse cross-section of disciplines. Theorganization oftheevenl itself had its own historical trajectory which followed from two ot her affairs Professor Monroe had organized in the fall of 1994 and the spring of 1995. "Poetry. Community, Movement:' an afternoon symposium. and "Past. Present. Future Tense." a three-day conference. respectively. renected on what the effects of the cultural. political and economic reconfigurations of 1989 were on how poetS and critics conceived their work. Professor Monroe explained that in considering this conference and its conjunction of Germany. China and America, he intended poetry to playa prominent and significant role in a multi-genre, multidisciplinary disquisition delving into the discursive constminlS of cultural politics after the end of the Cold War era. Hethen inaugurated the conference by reading a poem, "Disclosures:' by Michael Palmer from his 1995 collection. which is tellingly entitled AI Passages, and aptlyexpresses the experience of the uncertainties and (continued on page 6) GeroWIl Cu/rure Neil'S Page I DAADWEEKEND: GOETHE IN CONTEXT JaimeyFisher AoifeNaughton Erica Doerhoff In her historical contcxtualization of Goethe. Professor I.V. HuH asserted thaI the big problem between Goethe and his context is thai he lived too long. Between the yean; 1749 and 1832, thus over the courscof83 years, there was fundamental and wide-ranging upheaval in German politics. society. and economy. There was enormous violence, literal and metaphorical. done to Germany as it had been known until that lime. In addition to the well-known wars, including the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic invasion. there were the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and a revolution in the demographics of Germany's population. Politically, Germany shifted from small absolutist states 10 (still many and small) modem state/society models. Socially. Germany shifted from a Sriindegesellschaft (a society based on clearly defined Stiinde or quasi-classes) to a burgerlicke Gesellschaft (bourgeois society). These years finally culminated in the 1830 revolutions in Paris and Warsaw. which were symplOms as well as foreshadows of continuing and future tensions in the transformations transpiring in Europe. The demographic. political. and social changes marking Germany all overlapped. The agrarian and demographic revolution resulted in a doubling ofGermany.s population. which grew from thirteen million to twenty-five million overthe course of the eighteenth century. Concomitant with this population explosion were changes in the nature of work and the constitution of the workforce: women began to work formally in unprecedented numbers. a development with consequences for both marriages and general social relations. The population growth meant that there were many more poor people. and the indigent put significant pressure on the Stiindegesellschaft·s system of careers and social strata The government was in fact compelled to create new Stiinde. including the Bildungsbiirgertum, a social group to which Goethe belonged and that would have enormous influence on both German politics and culture. Some of the reformulation of the state and society was due in large pan to the Jasti ng influence ofthe En lightenment and its new understanding of the subject-citizen. natural law, and social reform. The citizens' public use ofreason and critique was thereafter supposed to inform their interactions with the state; society was now supposed to serve as the basis for the state. The Enlightenment. by way of the Napoleonic invasion, also had significant consequences for the rule of law: once Napoleon invaded, he introduced. in the place of the ad hoc but effective legal systems ofthe Holy Roman Empire, modem laws. By 1810.amodem legal system was in place. Some of Professor Hull's own recent work relates to the emergence ofthe bourgeois private and public spheres in this period, and she emphasized that ideas of privacy existed long before they were codified in the legal reforms. She cited a book from 1788 that suggested the twilight of the Stiinde system by recognizing a number of key features of the bourgeois private sphere. Well before many ofthese observations were officially recognized. the book understood civil society as a system of communication. observed the importance ofcompetition. rejected automatic deference 10 political leaders. accepted constant change as inevitable. and normativized tolerance. Parallel to the emergence of this private sphere was the rise ofthe public sphere. Literacy in Germany at 1800 was about 70%, higherthan either France or England. There was a massive burgeoning of print culture. of presses, bookstores, and voluntary associations 10 meet. read. and criticize. Many of these fundamental shifts had occurred by 1810, in time for an aging but still active Goelhe 10 observe and react 10 them. In his paper "Goethe in the GDR: The case of Werther," Michael Richardson. InstruClOr at Ithaca College. took up the question of the image and function of Goethe. particularly his The Sufferings of Young Wenker, in theGennan Democratic Republic (GDR). Richardsonopened with Walter Ulbricht's 1962 declaration that theGDR was "Faust. Part lII," astatement that reveals the intimate connection between the GDR's self-understanding and the bourgeois literary heritage. Goelhe. after all, is the very personification of this heritage and provides an unparalleled opponunity 10 reexamine the GDR's relation 10 it. Richardson reviewed the relationship of literary critics. anists. and the public ofthe GDR to the bourgeois literary tradition before analyzing the specific occasion of Plenzdorf s The New SufferingsofYoung W.. which appeared in Sinn and Form in 1973. Marx and Engels did nm discuss the relationship of the communist state to the bourgeois literary heritage in their cultural writings, so critics in the GDR had to turn to Lenin and LukAcs for guidance on this issue. Critics interpreted Lenin as fairly reconciliatory about the literary heritage and cast him in support of appropriating it: they interpreted Lenin to have said that the proletariat should extend, develop, and improve this heritage by acknowledging and working with it. In 1931-32. the German Communist Party (KPD) linked theircultural project to the bourgeois classics, and debated how best 10 wrest control of the canon from its fascist-leaning interpreters. Asthe Wcimareradrew toa close. most Marxists were strong defenders of German Classicism and Goethe in panicular as precursors of their own aesthetic. After World War U. Johannes Becher, the leading figure on the cultural politics scene in the early GDR. insisted that theGDR was the rightful inheritor of classicism, which he invoked against American "imperialist" formalism. There were. however, dissenting opin- ions in the GDR, some of which were on display in Brecht's 1952 production of Eisler's Uifaust. Brecht warned against the mysti fying aura ofhigh culture and the classics, and believed the most productive way 10 handle the classics was as material for contemporary problematics; Eisler depicts Faust as a charlatan and drunkard. The dominant interpretation of (continu~don pag~ /4) Page 2 German Culture News LISA LEWENZ VISITS CORNELL Valerie Weinstein Adam J. Sacks On Wednesday,November3. I999,guest filmmaker Lisa Lewenz presented her award-winning documentary, A Letter Without Words. In 197\, Lewenz found a treasure in her parents' attic: over 14 hours worth of film shot by her grandmother, Ella Lewenz. in Germany, the United States, Palestine, Brazil. and other locations from the period after World War I until her death in 1954. Since that time. more ofElIa Lewcnz' s footage, as well as someofhcrpapcrs and diaries. have come inlo Lisa Lewenz' s hands. Ella Arnhold Lewenz. mcmberoftwoofthe wealthiest and oldest German-Jewish families, had been an avid amateur photographer, possessinga home movie camera when it was still a luxury, and using color film before it was available to audiences in movie theaters. Ella. whorcmainedinGennanyuntil 1938, captured not only her family, exotic vacation locations, and bustling cityscapes, but also celebrities (such as family friend, Albert Einstein, amongst others), hislOrical events, and the marks ofchange in the Third Reich: soldiers, red banners and swastikas. More tellingly, she documented a range of signs and posters forbidding Jews access to various aspects ofdaily life such as swimming pools, park benches, telephone booths, and even whole towns. For seventeen years after finding this treasure, Lisa Lewenz researched, interviewed, traveled, translated, filmed, and edited in order to produce the hour-long documentary, A Letter Without Words. While Ella Lewenz's archival footage is the centerpiece of the film, Lisa Lewenz has created an effective personal and historical narrative through a montage ofthe archival footage. archival stills and documents, and her own contemporary footageofsites previously fi Imcd by hergrandmother. They include a visit with her aunt in Berlin, and interviews with surviving relatives. Whereas LisaLewenz filmed the contemporary footage with sound, she has accompanied her grandmother's silent footage with original music and yoiceovers.These are comprised of her own personal narrative, readings by relatives from her grandmother' s diaries, and other commentary, including a moving audio tape made by her father in 1969 where he expresses regret for having converted out ofJudaism. While some of the analysis, the chronological narrative. and the historical footage claim to represent an authentic, insider's view of an important hislOrical moment. other techniques in the film underscore how unique. contingent, and subjective this narrative is. The voiceover often expresses regret about missing text- diaries, letters, and documentsand infonnation about Ella Lewenz and her state of mind. Repeated references to the extraordinary wealth of the Amholds and Lewenzes, and an explanation of its role in buying the family' s way out ofNazi Gennany remind us that the original footage could have been produced and survived, only in this wealthy milieu. A scene where Lisa and her aunt Dorothea visit the Charlottenburg Standesam/ (registry office) housed in the family's former mansion makes the scale of this wealth most concrete for the viewer. The subjectivity of the narrative is further underscored by the differing perspectives of Lewenz's various relatives, and also panicularly neatly in a scene where Lisa reads diary entries by Ella about World War I and comments that that account is completely different from what she had leamed in school. It is this weaving ofthe historical and the subjective, present and past, sound and image, as well as the acknowledgement of absences and gaps, that makeA Letter Withour Words such an effective account. Valerie Wt'instt'in js a graduate sludt'nt in Iht' Dt'partment ofGertrUUl Studies al Comt'll. Declaring her Comell visit. "liberation day:' Lisa Lewenz's visit coincided with the first day on which she was not working on herfilm,A LetterWithou/ Words. The preceding eighteen years, four months and three days comprised, not only the film's production, but a process of oral history and historical research spanning an historical bridge upon which the "German Jewish century" unfolds. Rather than deferring to nostalgia fora "world of yesterday" that takes refuge in a simplified past, the continuity of stable origins is di srupted: the "revelation" ofidentity is exposed as a process constantly under revision and difference. As scenes of Weimar luminaries and the comfort of home life give way to the visual effects of fascist racism and the onset of exile, the film is interspersed, through interviews, with the memory ofthe many relatives of the grandmother. In the context of an ever-tightening noose of legislation. the grandmother's pursuit of film is an evident act of resistance, an "island of memory," surrounded by amnesia. A Letter Wirhout Words comprises a fraction of the overall footage and provides extraordinary accessibi lily tothe pictorial memory ofboth the Weimarand Nazi eras. making visible acultural heritage invisible in contemporary Gennan society. As the title indicates, it is based on the idea of silence: silent film and a silent interlocutor in an inter~generational memorial dialogue. As an examination of what silence means and how it works, the film sunders the common equation of silence and repression. In a traumatic context, silence may be a sign of a psychic (continued on page /6) Gennan Culture News Page 3 DAAD SUMMER SEMINAR: GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN GERMAN STUDIES Anna Parkinson On June 7, 1999. the fifteen participants ofthe DAAD summer seminar met for the first of many sessions to follow over the nexl six weeks. The groupconsistcd principally of professors and other professionals whose doctoral dissertations had been completed in German Studies, or whose research material wasderivcd from German speaking contexts. Their discipli nes i neluded German studies. romance studies, art hislory. visual arts, hislory. and psychoanalysis. Professor Biddy Martin of the German Studies Department. also Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, coordinated and taught the seminar. Professor Manin provided a provisional syllabus. which, after some discussian, emerged in a revised form 10 accommodate contemporary readings on gender and sexuality, several presentations by guest leeturers, and works in progress of the participants themselves. II was quite an achievement, as the participants' work on significantly different projects, ranged from queer re-readings of Marx and Husser! to analyses of visual materials and discourses from fin de siecle Vienna and Germany. In the first three weeks of the seminar, several seminal psychoanalytic texts by Sigmund Freud were studied, in order to examine how contemporary discourses of feminism and queer theory and contemporary theorists have argued with and against "the father of psychoanalysis." The group reviewed critiques of Freud's claims about gender and sexuality in the writings of Michel Foucault. George Mosse, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler. Jay Prosser. Lynne Layton, Jacques Lacan. Eric Santnerand Slavoj Zizek. Assistant Professor Ellis Hanson. Depanment of English, presentcd a reading of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs as a text about the sexuality that dares not speak its name, namely male homosexual- ity. Professor Judith Butler of the Uni· versityofCalifomia, Berkeley visited one of the Iri·weekly meetings in the second week in order to synthesize, "in her Hegelian manner." any questions about hcr own texts. Butler's presentation was followed by the first in a series ofinformal meetings that accompanied the text- and discussion-intensive days, The attention of the seminar turned 10 the work ofits participants. Biddy Martin presented a paper she had wriuen with Dr. Carol Miller on one of Dr. Miller's child patients who had been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. By suspending the diagnoses and working through. both with and against the child's relation to femininity, Dr. Miller avoided pigeon-holing the chi Id and demonstrated how the child's inimicallackofself-confidence was bound up with gender in ways that do nOl necessarily translate blithely imo pathology. Graduate studem Anna Parkinson then prepared an imerpretation of Eric Santner' s text on Daniel Paul Schrebcr, in which she examined the central roleof materiality and symbolic capital in thinking about sexuality. Week Four began with the last deconstructive tum directly towardsl away from Freud. After reading Isabel Hull's latest book and Laura Engelstcin 's examination of Foucault' s usefulness for the historian. Dr. Suzanne Stewart Steinberg of Romance Studies assigned Freud's "A Child is Being Beaten" forthe discussion of her own CUrTent research on sexual difference and thcdemocratic subject. Subsequent discussions involved the imerscctions among Marxism. the Left, and sexuality, which was introduced by a discussion of Friedrich Engels's "The Origin of the Family," and Gert Hekma' s collection of essays. Gay Men and the Sexual History o/the Political Left. Assistam Professor Randall Halle from the University of Rochester presented his work in progress, a queered reading of parts of the writings of HusserIand Marx. In a related vein, Dr. James Keller read from two chapters of his doctoral dissertation, recently completed at CUNY, and entitled "The Role of Political and Sellual Identity in the Works of Klaus Mann," Finally, Professor Dagmar Herzog from Michigan Stale University, offered two pieces ofwriting pending publication: the first on sex and marriage in Germany after World War U, and the second, mischievously entitled: "Germany's Most Misbehaving Children: Child Sexuality, the West German New Left, and the Nazi Past." Dr. Mariatte Denman ofStanford Uni versity presemed the penultimate paper and this week's series of discussions, taken from two chapters of a book that she is preparing for publication. Herworkconcerns the aesthetics of memory, and considers the rubble plays in termsof gender. genre and aesthetics. Finally, Assistant Professor Julie Johnson of the University of Chicago assigned two chaptcrs from her dissertation entitled ''The Art of Woman: Women's Art Exhibitions in Finde-Siecle Vienna," in which she discusses the discursive spaces of the artist - in particular that of the gallery - through a Foucauldian inflected lens. The diverse methodological approaches and arcas of research served to stimulate and extend discussions that provoked challenging comparisons bctween various projects and protagonists. The final week began with an elltremely full schedule. Assistant Professor Howard Pollack from DePauw University discussed his analysis of literary representations of masculinity in the literature of German Romanticism. This paper was nicely complemented by the subject matterofDr. Brad Prager's work. a chapter from the doctoral thesis he recently completed in the German Depanment at Cornell, entitled "Don't Look Back: Pygmalion and the Poet's Vision in Joseph von EicJ'tendorff's Das Mannorbild. " Two papers by Assistant Professor Hedwig Frauenhoferfrom GeorgiaCollege and State University, were read and discussed. The most controversial one posed the question whether or not JeanPaul Sartre might be considered a fascist writer. Assistant Professor David EhrenpreisofJames Madison University then presented his fascinating visual and textual research into the main opponent of the femme fatale in tum-of-the-century (continued on pag~ /5) Page 4 Gennan Cultltre N~ws FACULTY PROFll..£ HEGEL CONFERENCE TO BE HELD MARCH 31-APRIL 1 Professor PeterGiIgen ofthe Department of German Studies will host a two-day conference March 31 and April I on ''The End of An: Aesthetics and Knowledge After Hegcl." The conference will be guided by two questions: What is the meaning of aesthetics at the end of the twentieth century? And how is Hegel's answer to this question in his Aesthetics relevant for our age? Participating arc Professor Andrew Bowie, DeparunemofGennan, University of London; Professor Mark Roche, DepanmentofGcnnan and Russian. University of Notre Dame; Professor Donald Phillip Verene. Department of Philosophy. Emory University; Professor William Egginton, SUNY Buffalo. Professor Jason Hill, Southern Illinois University and presently a Fellow at the Society for the Humanities. Cornell University,doctoral candidates Steve De Caroh, SUNY Binghamton, and Marianne Tettlebaum, Department of Music, Cornell. The conference will begin at 2:00p.m. on Friday,March31 and continue at 10:300n Saturday, April I. Venue is the Guerlac Room, A. D. White House. Sponsors include the Institute for German Cultural Studies, the German Academic Exchange Service, University Lectures Committee, Society for the Humanities, Institute for European Studies, Einaudi Center Events Fund, and the depanments of German Studies, Government, Comparative Literature, and English at Cornell. The public is cordially invited. For further information, please contact Professor Gilgen at telephone 254-3312 or pg33@cornell.edu. In connection with this conference, Pr0fessor Susan Buck-Morss (Government) will give a lecture entitled "Hegel and Haiti" on Thursday, March 30, at 4:30 p.m. in the Guerlac Room, A. D. White House. This lecture is also open to the public.· 1""------------....,Frederick. Neuhousercame to Cornell in September 1998, as Associate Professor in the Department ofPhiJosophy, where he teaches courses in Gennan Idealism, Rousseau, and political philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 from Columbia University where he wrote a dissertation on Fichte's project of unifying Kant's accounts of theoretical and practical rea- son. BeforecomingtoComell,Neuhouser taught for three years at the University of California, San Diego. Priortothat, hewas eight years at Harvard University. In 1990 hc published his first book, Fichu 's TheoryofSubj~ctiviry. This book attempts to articulate Fichte' s understand- ing of tlleoretical and practical self-con- sciousness (as inherited from Kant) and to spell out wllat these fonns of con- sciousness have in common that makes them modesof"subjectivity." The book's Theory, thesis is that Fichte attempts to resolve This year Neuhauser is a Fellow at the certain tensions internal to Kant's ac- Society for the Humanities. where he is count of theoretical self-consciousness beginning work on a new book. again on (Ille 'I think ' oftranscendental appercep- Hegel and Rousseau. The topic of this tion) and that in doing so he arrives at his foundational idea of the "self-positing" nature of all subjectivity. Neullouser argues that, in onc version or another, project is the importance of recognition (for Hegel) or of I'amour propre (for Rousseau) in the constitution of subjectivity. He is investigating Rousseau's Fichte's conception of the self-positing and Hegel's views on the role the human subject informs much ofthe philosophical tradition that follows. including the thought of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Same, He recently completed ACluali~ingFr~e­ dom: Foundations of Hegel's Social ~or)', which is due to be published in March by Harvard University Press. In need for recognition fTOm others plays, not only in generating conflict and domination but also in making it possible for human subjects to be rational, free, and bound by moral laws. In conjunction with this new researeh Neuhauser is teaching a two-semester sequence of seminars on ~Subjectivity this book Neuhouser articulates the vari- and the Other." The aim of the seminars ous conceptions offreedom that underlie is to examine various philosophical ver· Hegel's social theory, in a way that shows sions ofthe claim that subjectivity is con- the contemporary relevance of some of Hegel's ideas about what constitutes a free social order. The book looks backward by making usc ofRousscau's ideaof the general will in order to explain how stituted througll individuals' relations to othersubjeeu. TheseminarinFaJll999 looked at this theme in the context of the master slave dialectic by Hegel, Sartre. and de Beauvoir. The second semester being part of a social and political order can make one free. It also portrays Hegel's social theory as a forerunner of Marx's critiquc ofcapitalism and ofearly Critical will focus on the role relations to other subjects play in the constitution of social identity, conscience, rationality. as well as guilt and neurosis. German Culture News Page 5 (Berlin, Beijing - conrinuedfrom page 1) awkward transitions since 1989 through itscontortionofafamiliaridiom. "Disclosures" makes very suggestive commentary on the structures and constraints of writing during the Cold War as well as incisive observations about the ideological order that has usurped it since 1989 through its allusion to and overt use oflhe Berlin Wall for cullural and poetic material. and post-socialist Brecht that pepper the question of the tum of East Germany in 1989. Due to demands oftime, Professor Grimm.decided to drop another poem by VolkerBraun, "Wustenstunn," and instead devoted the rest of his lecture 10 the three poems by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Grimm's translation and discussion of Enzensberger'spoem "Aufbruchsstimmung" from the 1991 volume, Zukunftsmusik, was of particular interest because he juxtaposed it with Jonathan Monroe's own translation of the poem, which appeared in an article on Enzensberger's Utopian Pragmatist Poetics in 1997. Grimm argued that Monroe's translation exposed an obstacle that he overcame by opting for a translation thai privileged the reading of Ihe sense of a word over ils sound and homophonic .play. ----.... Reinhold Grimm ProfessorReinhold Grimm from the Dcpartment ofComparative Literature at the University of Californial Riverside, presented the first paper of the conference, "AroundandAfterthe Wende: FourRepresentative Poems." He read his own translations of Volker Braun's "0 Chicago! 0 Widerspruch!," Hans Magnus Enzensberger's "Aufbruchsstimmung," "Altes Europa," and "Der Krieg, Wie," Hi.~ translations were accompanied by detai led, critical commentary concerning the challenges and compromises that confront the prospective translator. Although his commentary was couched in terms of the concerns of a translator, it also served as an explication of recent contributions from some of Germany's most regarded poets to the "tum" of 1989. Professor Grimm used "0 Chicago! 0 Widerspruch!, "which Volker Braun dedicated to him for a 1991 publication, 10 demonstrate the difficu Ities of satisfactorily rendering intertextual references. Braun's references to Bertolt Brecht arc doubly challenging not only in light ofthe accumulation of Brecht's Biblical and Shakespearean allusions. but also on account of the characlerizations of the pre- Quoting a headline inDerWochenspiege/ from July 1993, Gerd Gemiinden, ProfessorofGermanandComparativeLiteralure al Dartmouth College, began the second presenlation with an exclamation and a question that distilled and reflected the peculiarproblem ofnational identity in the unified Germanys. It read: "Wir sind wieder weT! Aber wer? ("We arc somebody again! But who?) It captured the curious paradox of the resurgent national pride and the concomitant crisis concerning German identity in the wake of the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic a~ well as the Federal Republicof Germany that existed along side it. GemUnden investigated this paradox that is made manifest in the discussions concerning national and cultural identity by concentrating on the writings of three West German artists: the fi lmmakers, Hans Jiirgen Syberberg and Wim Wenders; and the novelist Botho StrauB. They have all made vaulting rcassessmentsofGcrmany that promise 10 lay the groundwork for the unified country. Ahhough they arc radically different in many ways, the texts of Syberbcrg, Wendcrs and StrauB arcunited in their usc of a common narrative strategy, namely. a"(re)birth-of·a-nation" story that is linked to a nostalgia that longs for a bener future. Such nostalgia inevitably stands in tension or opposition to the history of the postwar years or Third Reich. Gemiinden sees this nostalgia mobilized through a shared set of binary opposition: own (eigen) and foreign (jremd); high art and mass culture; and tradition and being up-tO-date. The text from Hans Jiirgen Syberberg that Gemiinden considered was Yom UnglUck und Gliick der Kunst in Deutschland rUlch dem Jetl.ten Kriege, which he wrote between the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989 and the German unification in October 1990. In this polemical piece, Syberberg asserts that unification offers the opportunity to recoverthe lost heritage ofthe culture that has degenerated since thc loss of World War II. His argument becomes increasingly disturbing in that the postwardctenoration eclipses the horrors ofthc Holocaust. Indeed, Gemiinden argued that, according to Syberberg, only art is Ihe true victim of the Holocaust. Gemiinden referred to the recent work of Stephen Brockmann in addressing theconundrom of understanding the critical praise bcstowed upon Syberbcrg in the 70s in light ofthis upsettingessa),. Brockmann reads prefigurations of Von Ung/iick in films that arc attenuated by the historical position from which he speaks. Gemilnden considered Wim Wenders' speech given on November 10, 1991, "Reden iiber Deutschland" (Talking about Germany) particularly difficult to reconcile with his earlier work thai expressed an ambiguous, highly self-conscious love-hale relation- Page 6 German Culture News ship with America. In his speech, he made a similar plea forGerman national identity by attacking American popular culture as the agent that is imported to fi II the cultural vacuum around Germany and prevents that identity from being produced from within. It is particularly curious that Wenders articulates this view by drawing upon autobiographical passages that differ significantly from their first presentation in his work. Gemunden identified the truly troublesome aspeCI of Wenders' speech in his recourse to an 18'" century notion of Kufturnation that he uses to explain the rootedness, authenticity and purity of German culture that opposes American popularculture and regrettably smacksofracismandelitism. Whereas the essays of Wenders and Syberberg received relatively little attention. Botho StrauB's "AnschwellenderBocksgesang" (Increasing Tragedy) set off a public debate for making arguments very simi lar to those of Wenders and Syberberg. He speaks much less directly to the question of national identity. Instead, he advocates a cult ofthe loner. Furthermore, his quest for reconciliation with the "long tradition" is not made with nationalist terminology. Gemtinden argued that the difficulty in coming 10 terms with this discourse can be explained in part by the legacy of the overcompensatory antinationalisl rhetoric oflhe 70s and 80s. Xilll) Mei Chen Professor Xiao Met Chen, from the Dcpanments of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Ohio State University took the podium on Friday as the last speaker of the morning session, presenting a paperentitled" Bird-lovers. Prostitutes. and Other Patriots: The Performance of the Nation in Post-1989 China." Professor Chen began by discussing the contrast between the romantic courtship with the West after the death of Mao, and the more recentdisenchantmcnt with the West following the tragic ending of 1989 student demonstrationsatTiananmenSquare. She proposed to eltamine the Chinese constructions of the West that became popularin post-1989 China and their reflection of a new conception of Chinese identity. She proceeded by examining two pieces of contemporary Chinese theatre, highlighting an ideological departure from the official view of the Chinese nationalism sineethe founding ofthe People's RepublicofChina. Professor Chen first discussed the 1992 production of Guo Shilting's Birdmen, a piece written forthe elite theaterofspoken drama. Birdmen meditates on the question ofChinese identity and nalional character in contemporary China using dramatic conflict between a Chinese man, a Chinese-American man, and an American-educated Chinese man in 1990s Beijing. The primary tension is between Dr. Paul Ding, a Chinese American psychiatrist, and the men he treats in Beijing. Professor Chen posited that Ding is alienated by the common cultural referents of his patients, which were almost always political and collective, and thai Guo's work constructs the Chinese American as a representative of his adoptive country both in its cultural imperialism and its cultural illiteracy. Professor Chen went on to eumine Ke Xing's TheBiographyojSaijinhua. This work depicts one of society's least enfranchised members. a young prostitute, both as a link to the West and as a proponent of Chinese national integrity. Sai used her German language skills to work out a compromise with a German barbarian. She drew a parallel to the two-faced image of China Ke presents, which is represented both by the meek and submissive Qing Court and by the prostitute Sai Jinhua, who puts forward Ihe hope for strong China. Chen remarked that the figureofSai linhuais simultaneously glorified, as a national hero, and denigrated as a lower-class prostitute. Professor Chen suggested that the issues of gender. class, and race gain new imponance inthis post-1989 construction of national identity. Professor Chen concluded that China's response to its foreign others after 1989 not onlycontinued the official view ofthe anti-imperialist nature ofChinese nationalist movements, but also e~pressed a subversive view of the PRC government as weak and submissive, much like previous regimes. She made comparisons between both the internal and eltternal imperialist threal, and the popularity of stories of individual heroism. Professor Chen insisted that the Chinese construction of the others still retains its double-edged quality as an official and anti-official discourse. Friday's afternoon session began with a paper by Professor Yunte Huang from the DepartmemofEnglish at Harvard University, entitled "Dei magining the Language: Post-Tiananmen Chinese Writing." Huang, proposed using the neologism "deimagining" to describe the work of younger Chinese avant-garde poets, such as Xu Bing and Che Qianzi who are pushing the question of 'Chineseness' and language to a new level. Professor Huang explained that they differ radically from the TodayGroup (also known as the Misty School), which constitues the majority of canonical contemporary literature and includes such luminaries as Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, and Yang Llan. Though Huang asserted that this group broke new ground in contemporary Chinese literature, he ultimately criticized the group, saying that the writers and intellectuals associated therewith are overdetermined by an eltile mentality and lack peripheral thinking. Huang posited a characterization of the TodayGroupandtheirwritingaseltilic. He assened that their writing eltpresses a nostalgic yearning for 'home.' an undying will to return lO the 'center' from which they have been removed. Huang further remarked that this eltilic mentality is so deeply inscribed in the Today Group that they adhere to a Sinocentric version of world literature. which stands in notable contrast to the Gennan Romantic model. However. Professor Huang praised the younger Chinese avant-garde anists I writers Xu Bing and Che Qianzi. Huang German Culture News Page 7 attributed to this generation a 'deimagination of the center,' which he defined as a poetic rethink..ing of the heterogeneity and polyphony ofthe Chinese language. He cited the examples of Xu Bing, a master of printmaking; and Che Qianzi, a poet and leader of the Original group. Huang first examined Xu's piece entitled "A Book from the Sky," in which Xu invents about four thousand Chinese characters and achieves their deimagination through a 'radicalization' of the characters, a process in which radicals (components of Chinese characters) regain their nomadic quality-the potentials for regrouping and degrouping. Huang also explicated the skepticism expressed by Che in his poetic experiments, where Chinese culture and language are referred to as "hand-copied paperbacks;" in this pithy remark, Che expressed both distance from and criticism ofChina-centered and Chinese-centered discourses. Huang went on to delineate the 'panAsian tour' running through Che's work, which, Huang explicated. demonstrates a series of copying, borrowing, or crosscultural appropriation in such discourse. Huang concluded by expanding his definitionofdeimagination, whereby, he said, '" try to identify fractures of a seemingly homogeneous linguistic culture and to rearticulate the dissonance that has been muffled in the process of nation-building and canon-making." Huang argued that deimagination is acultural unlearning that captures the core ofwriting, which always imagines what is impossible and deimagines what is possible. Professor Beatrice Hanssen from the Depanmem of Germanic Languages and Literature al Harvard University, presented the last paperon Friday, "Memory, Void, Extension: The Jewish Museum in Berlin," which examined Daniel Liebeskind's design as an allempt to make visible or perceptible the present absence of the BerlinJews. She immediately proceeded to situate the work within the cityscape and offered an extensive exegesis of the design, explicating the architectural gestures and their allusions, while explaining how the work sought toextemalize voids that arenot even traces. Professor Hanssen articulated the limits of representation that are challenged in this project by referring to and critiquing Adorno's nOlion of negati vity and his own writing on the incommensurabilityofthe Holocaust. In doing so, she cited Kant's concepts of the sublime and radical evil as means ofbringing together the political potential of aesthetics with the necessity of negative representation. However, itoa pam referring to Kant's own commentary on the Egyptian Pyramids as an anificial construction of the sublime, she underscored that she did not believe in the unrepresentability of the Holocaust as an example of the sublime, but instead as a problem ofthe negative. Furthermore.she would nOl connect it to )(ant's ethics. Professor Hanssen further developed her discussion through invocation of Schoenberg's opera, Moses and Aron, as a way ofintroducing the issue ofimagination. Leslie Adelson, Chai rofGcrman Studies at Cornell, opened Saturday's morning session with a paper entitled, "Touching Tales of Turks, Germans, and Jews: Literary Riddles for the 90s." The riddle in Professor Adelson's title refers to the contemporary riddle of referentiality in literature and history as it is made mani fest in the broad historical narrativeofcivilization and barbarity that ace touchstones for the Holocaust and Turks in Germany. Adelson identified the frequently deployed narrative of regression to barbarism as one that is susceptible to a number of problematic assumptions, whereas a narrative of the return of the repressed avoids such pitfalls. For that reason, Adelson reads the question of the Turks in contemporary Germany against the backdrop of trauma in order to tease out the riddle of referentiality. Adelson traced the cultural comparisons of the Turks and Jews, beginning with a Leftist slogan of the 60s, which proclaimed the "Turks are the Jews of Today." German-Turkish literalureofthe early 80s, however, docs not refer to Turks as Jews. Interestingly, since 1989, German-Turkish literature invokes the Jewish comparison. Adelson explained that she is interested in exploring the structural function of Jewish referentiality in Turkish texts, inquiring, what can it tell us. She positioned her scholarly pursuits in opposition toa paniculara~pcctofHommi Bhabha's essay in Nation and Narration, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modem Nation" that borrows the image ofthe Turkish Gastarbeiter as a figure of the Double I Uncanny from John Berger's A Seventh Man in order to express the radical incommensurabililyof translation. Adelson attacked this use of the trope that perpetuates the Turk as figure of incoherence. Adelson went on to point to Peter Weiss' play Mara! I Sade as an example of the referential excitabilityofthe Holocaust, in panicular Scene 22 of Act!' In that moment, it becomes apparent that the play is less about the French Revolution and more about the crisis of historical consciousness and the relation between the historical past and present. Professor Adelson proceeded to invoke the work of zafer Senocak in order to demonstrate how the status of referentiality and rhetoric of the past 30 years was being interrogated. During Saturday's presentations, Professor Kang Liu from the Depanment of Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University reprised the theme of contemporary Chinese national identification and international relations by presenting an analysis of the aftereffects of the Tiananmen student demonstrations. These he characterized as a search for a new symbolism that can capture the sentiments of a public in social and political turmoil. Professor Liu described the bizarre senseofdeja vu in Bcijingat the May 1999 demonstrations, which were foreshadowed by what U, S, A, Today called 'anti-V, S. vitriol'that gushed from Beijing following NATO's missile attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Professor Liu commented on the 'global,' meaning V. S., attention to Beijing's studem demonstrations in May 1989 and then in May 1999, and the multitude of images it supplied. He contrasted two salient media symbols of the decade: the Goddess of Democracy statue in white plastic, erected in Tiananmen Square, May 1989; and an imageofa weary looking U.S. Ambassador, James Sasser. He is peering from the damaged Beijing Embassy door on Page 8 German Culture News May 11, 1999, with the caption: "he has been imprisoned for four days." Rather than interpreting the events and their symbols, he proposed to track the development of the contorted and contradictory trajectory of intellectual and cultural polio tics since 1989. KangLiuarguedthatthe anti-Americanism in the student demonstrations of 1999 was not a simple reflection of the waning popularity of U.S.inspiredliberal ideologies amongst a postTi ananmen generation of pragmatists and nationalists. Nor does the 1989 Goddess ofDemocracy symbolize a total capitulation to 'Western bourgeois liberalization' as communist die-hards had charged. Professor Liu supported his contention thai the symbolic interpretation is challenged by the complex intra- and international drama unfolding as China enters a capitalist-dominated global system. The international media's demonization of China. and the intense domestic battles, which involve the pro-free market, proefficiency liberalists; the pro-justice and equality 'New Left;' theleftisl old guards; and the party line that "economic-development-is-all" underscores the dilemma ofrepresenting China as seen from within and without. Professor Liu concluded that the various searches for a new symbolism of the decade are enmeshed in global realpolitik, and in military, economic, and ideological warfare. He further proposed that this complex trajectory suggests a different kind of postmodern indeterminacy, notas a result ofinfinite interplay offree-floating signifiers or symbols, but as a result of a new round of global power games with finite and determinate objectives. Professor Ull Linke, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University and Ludwig-Uhland-lnstitut, Tiibingen. concluded the morning session on Saturday with her paper entitled: ''There is a Land Where Everything is Pure: Linguistic Nationalism and Identity Politics in Germany." She investigated the process of German unification and its consequent reinvention of a political community through the fabrication ofa national imaginary. Shewasparticularlyconccmed with the specific ideological form of ideal signifiers that facilitates the fonnation of the nation-state and appears as a natural process. Professor Linke argued that the two most important ideological strategies employed in the course ofGennan unification reinscribe its historically diverse populations as naturally rooted in a common language and race. She explained that these terms operate togethercomple· mentarily to represent the "nation" as an absolutely autonomous unit. Those terms situate the "national character" as a quality immanent in the "people." Diversity is completely eliminated as a category so that the only symbolic difference exists between Germans and foreigners. Professor Linke illustrated this idea with the imageofthe Gennan state' sexternal frontiers becoming internal frontiers, so that they can be imagined both as a projection and protection of an internal collective that enables Germans to inhabit the space of the state. Professor Linke proceeded to show how this logic of race, heredity, and blood, which defines those who belong to the nation as an extended circle of kin, has been inscribed into language. Her analysis focused on the political production of linguistic nationality, and the legitimation ofitselfthrough corporal metaphors, which she finds embedded in quasi-mythic notions of the German nation as a linguistic body most notably in the idioms ofblood. She proceeded with a historical examination of diverse political issues such as the citizenship debates, immigration policies. Gennan languagereform. and Gennan lit· erary societies. Professor linke concluded that the Gennan nation accorded a privileged place to the symbol of language in its own initial process of formation and bound political unity closely to linguistic uniformity and linked national unification to the ethnicization of language. Professor Dilip Gaonkar from the School ofCommunications Studies at Northwestern University opened the afternoon session on Saturday with his paper, ''The Rushdie Apology: Six Texts in Search of a Character" that clearly moved the conference "beyond" the realm of Berlin and Beijing. The first texts under consideration were coeval with theevents in Berlin and Beijing and resulted from the controversy surrounding the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in 1988 that unveiled a new dimension in literary communication. Forthe first time. the technological resources and financial incentives of multinational publishing houses enabled the publication of a work like Rushdie's nearly simultaneously (even in translations) in radically different cultural settings with different conventions and strategies for decoding and consuming "messages."literary or otherwise. The "author" (and hislher publishers) arc confronted with a new set of communicative "rights and obligations" that cannot be fully understood or justified in terms derived e~c1usively from the Western Enlightenment tradition of'freedom of thought and expression." Even some of Rushdie's staunchest supporters, who champion freedom ofexpression, have questioned his (and his publisher's) practical judgment in their decision 10 publish the book in that form at that particular historical junctuTC. ProfessorGaonkar examined six texts that Rushdie has published since the controversy over his novel erupted: "An Open Letter to the Indian Prime Minister" (October 7,1989); "A Clash of Faiths" (February 28. 1989); "lnGood Faith" (February 4. 1990); "Is Nothing Sacred?" (February 6,1990); "Why I have Embraced Islam?" (December 28,1991); and "A Thousand Days in a Balloon" (December 12. 1993). Professor Gaonkar explained that these six texts may be regarded a" Rushdie's "apology" or "defense" of himselfand hi s German Culture News Page 9 novel that consists of two sets of arguments. The first pel1ains to the "right" of an authorto publish hi s or her work free of censorship or any other fonn of intimidation. The second is Rushdie' s rejection of the claim that The Satanic Verses is intended to "insull and abuse" Islam. On the contrary, Rushdie argues that his novel should be viewed as an auempt 10 provide a language that would enable the postcolonial and diasporic muslims and other people from the Indian subcontinent to better understand their migrant experience and further to resist the marginalization of the host countries' hegemonic culture. Gaonkarshowedhow Rushdie addresses not only different audiences but also speaks from multiple and sometimes contradictory "subject-positions" in order to defend himselfin different political idioms (liberal,communitarian, and postmodem I perfonnative) depending upon the audience. He concluded that a close reading of these texts shows the limits of"practical reasoning" embedded in different political idioms in a deeply divided multicultural world. Saturday's afternoon session also brought a paper by Tobin Sieben, of the University of Michigan, Depanment of English Language and Literature entitled ''The Return to Ritual: Violence and Art in the Media Age." Siebcrs'spaperexplored the renewed preoccupation with animal and human bodies as revealed by the "Sensation" ex.hibition currently lOuring the world. Siebers remarked that this preoccupation has risen to fetishistic lev- els. pointing out that theart work ilSClf not only represents but incorporates flesh and animal material. He noted the cultural studies field's auention to the signal importance oftraumatic bodies inthe media, adding that theorists ofritual have equally given special attention to bodies in the productionof"collectiverepresentations" - ideals ofcommunity disguised as transcendental notions. Siebers explained this shared attention by citing their common argument that bodies set into motion is a symbolic action, by which collective representations achieve an outward appearance, thereby providing a specific community with a powerful symbol to represent its cohesiveness. Siebers applied this argument to the "Sensation" exhibit, citing specific examples ofits incorporation of animal flesh and organic material as the catalysts ofthis 'symbolic action,' as well as the subjects of greatest media controversy. Siebers went on to examine the impact of the media. He contended that it enlarges the work of collective representation, stretching the idea of community from a group whose members are physically present to each other to one whose members communicate by vinue of print and other technologies. Media attention may thus conton and complicate the intended audience or 'community' ofthe work, rendering it effectively 'vinual' rather than 'actual.' This brought Siebers 10 his central questions: what, then. is the effect of the media on symbolic action and the collective representations produced by various communities? Do media technologies defeat ritual or return us to the ritual era? Siebers explored these questions through the filter of the "Sensation" ex.hibitand its recent media uproar. In light of this he argued that cultural studies needs to develop strategies for enlarging local analyses of collective representations to account for the influence of symbolic action on a global scale. It also, Siebers noted. needs to ex.amine how globalization affects the ritual desire for social cohesion. Andrt'w Ross Professor Andrew Ross, Director of the American Studies Program at New York University anda writer for Art/arum. The Nation, The Village Voice, amongst other publications, delivered the concluding lecture of the conference on Saturday night: "Celebration Chronicles: Life,Libeny and the Pursuit of Propeny Value in Disney's New Town." "was an account of his year-long stay at Disney's suburban development, which opened in Celebration, Florida in 1996. The town was touted as the stan of a bold social experiment, a showcase for the most cuttingedge ideas about urban planning. Ross reponed on the complex.ities ofthe corporate developed community and ils underside that have generated complaints about construction, community rules and schools as well as other larger issues and implications that have yet to be voiced. Ross placed Disney's Celebration in the tradition of utopian communities established to realize the American Dream and situated it within the context of the New Page 10 Gemwn Culture News Urbanist movement that seeks to combat suburban sprawl and restore public life to the increasingly privatized landscape. Ross, however, pointed out that Celebration brought the movement into the corporate future. The corporate interests are particularly complicated and compete with one another on different registers. The company has two hands on the land, one that isat work buildingashowpiececommunity, while theotherrecruits low wage labor. However, the economic risks for an image conscious company in the hospitality industry, which traditionally operates scripted developments such as theme parks, are extremely large. In spite of the generally beneficial zoning and tax incentives that Disney negotiated. as well as the meteoric rise in the value of the property since it was acquired, the fifteen-year investment is still difficult for a company with deep pockets. Therisk is seen in even greater relief with the consideration that the project was neverdemand driven. The public and retail space was developed before there was a need. Ross reported that the peculiar position of Disney as real estate developerexerted an unusual influence over the decisionmaking dynamics in school and community issues. For example, when a critical majority of parents became dissatisfied with the rather progressive school. it was reconceived as a more traditional institution. The residents expected a high level customer of satisfaction that one would nonnally associate with an industry like tourism, rather than real estate development. Ross concluded with a question quoting Blake and asking whether the public and private realms are slouching IOwards the end ofthe milleni urn as it is no longer easy to distinguish between the two.' Fran::. Peter Hugdahl is a graduate student in the DepGrtment ofGermnn Studies at Cornell University. CQlltributiOfl$ to Gennan Culture News are welcome. /fyou would IiJu an el'enl listed or have an artie/e to contribute, please contact Julia Stewart at 255-8408 ore·mail:js75@comell.edu (Colloquium· continued from page /) SlCmley CorngoM much malter. Such quick movements from one discursive level to another produce an aura of some kind of transcendence. Comgold points out that Kafka not only tums the empirical world inside-up and upside-down, but links consecutive inversions in a potentially infinite chain, by employing the rhetorical device ofchiastic recursion. This employment, however, is not arbitrary. Kafka's texts, in fact. reveal the necessity of recursion. Thus a discussion of parables becomes a parableof parables, initiating a parabolic chain which extends further and further away from any final reference. While Kafka "writes it into being," he does so because he is aware that recursion is necessary: it happens, and his acknowledgment of the event is itself an event. But Kafka's recognition is also more than an event in that it brings him the power to write and the possibility of bridging the artistic and the ethical. From a HeideggerNietzschean perspective, Being is an event, and for KalKa the event in and of writing is Being as writer: "Schriftstellersein." Kafka needs the necessity: his consciousness of the inevitabililyof recursion provides him with the only weapon for fighting within the recursive system: his own practice. Discussion of the paper centered on questions of method, particularly what was seen as Comgold's use of empirical reference. He responded that Kafka's work cannot be split offfrom the empirical personality. Much of the unpublished writing, Comgold noted, is still "in a way auached to Kafka's body," and the writer himself struggled with the tension between the literal and the figurative. Amalia Herrmann is a graduate student in lhe Department of Germnn Sludies al Cornell. Volker Kaiser of the Department of Gennanic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia presented a paper entitled "Marx and Modemity: PromisesPremises" to the Colloquium series on October 1. His paper, originally given at a Bonn conference Versprechen zur Modeme /848-1949, set out to explore the intersection of a possibly redemptive Marxist criticism andmodem history. Such a redemptive criticism would, he argued, allempt to uncover the revolutionary potential within traditional fonn. Kaiser made a plea for acritical analysis of the 'collusion of discursive presentation and critical force' in Marxist discourse, a collusion that provides the very articulation of promised modemity. In order to highlight this, he proposed a reading of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in which the 'fonns of presentation' provide the possibility for critique. Indeed the very problem of presentation, which in this text refers explicitly to revolution, is linked to the notion of repetition. Marx articulates his own theory of historical repetition by supplementi ng Hegel's historical narrative in the language of theatrical presentation. Events in history happen twice, he writes, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Kaiser argued that the very practice of iteration - of Marx citing Hegel and then adding his own interpretation - this presentation as repetition with adifference, affccts ''the construction of acritiquc." Such a reproductive structure ofpresentation, he asserted, gives rise to altemativesorschisms in the construction of a critique, e.g. revolution becomes counter-revolution. He then mobilized Freud's dream theory and German Culrure News Page II Benjamin's 'rcdemptivecritique' ofMarx to explore the potential transfiguration of such repetitions and proceeded to ask how Marx in his essay on the Eighteenth Brumaire might "exceed or transcend lIle alternatives presented to it." Kaiserwent funher and asked how criti- cal Marxism might arrive at apoint where revolution is not reversible. Following Derrida, he suggested that this might be possible only if the critique conceives of material analysis as a 'working through' rather than as an exorcism. Like Marx's vision of the proletariat revolution, those involved with such acritique must "criticize themselves constant!y, interrupt themselves continually in thcirown course.. deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltriness of their first attempts," The context for Kaiser's argument was the possibility of a "revival of Marx and his texts after the pronounced or declared collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe." A critical engagement with the Marxist structureof repetition might, he concluded, provide "hope for its future and its redemption." A lively discussion ensued. Questions focused mainly on whether or not one could reud a redemptive promise into Marx'stcxts, in panicular. whether or not there might be acontemporary context for such a structure of hope in the light ofthe events of 1989. The colloquium also questioned whether critique as presentalion I critiqiue as promise was peculiarto Marxism. Aoife Naughton is a graduate studel1l in the Depanmenr of Compararive Litera/ure at Cornell. On October 15, Jill Gillespie presented "Public History, Private Stories: AuthorizingGendcrinHelkeSander'sBeFreierwuJ Bejrejte"auheIGCSColloquium. Gillespie's paper. a chapter of her dissertation on trauma in postwar German women's film, intervenes in both the specific reception of Sander's BeFreier und Befreite and psychoanalytic debates about trauma and Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung in postwar Jm Gillespie Germany. The reception of Befreier und Befreite has largely been critical of Sander forstaging the mass rapes ofGcnnan women by occupation soldiers at the end of World War IT as pan of an ahistorical "Geschlechtskrieg." Gillespie argues that thiscriticism, whilepotentially valid, fails to notice lIle ways in which the film works throughlilehistoricaltrauma Thefilmboth articulates this trauma. and conslIUcts ilSelf as a "transitional object" that can be used to come to terms with its ambiguities. Gillespie began lIle colloquium by explaining her primary questions; How does lIle German public sphere attempt to negotiate u"correct"viewoflile past? How do films interact in lIle many spheres of lIlese discourses, and how has gender been instrumentalized to represent historical concerns? She lIlen showed 16 minutes of excerpts fromBefreierund Befreite, which provided additional stimulus for the lively discussion that followed. This discussion covered a wide range of topics. from "the culturcofsi !cnce" and notions ofcollective identity to lIle validity ofSander's use ofan ahistoricaI "Geschlechtskrieg" to frame her imagesandtheefficacyofmomentsofirony and alienation in the film. Valerie Wein.rtein i.ra graduate .rtudeflf itt the Department of German Studies at Cornell. •••••••• Anelle Schwarz, interim Assistant Director ofthe Institute for Gennan Cultural Studies, introduced Geoffrey WinthropYoung to the IOCS colloquium by highlighting his resume. which reaches well beyond the academic sphere and includes forays into the realms of publishing and thealer. It was doubly appropriate that in characterizing his eclectic career she presented him as a Renaissance man because it aptly set the stage for the paper he was presenting. His composition concerned a recent attempt to combine the insights ofFriedrich Kittler's media lIleory with the systems theory of the late Niklas Luhmann, which aspires to pave the way fora media and communications-centered 'supertheory.' Prof. Winthrop-Young, who is on leave from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver this semcsteras the IGCS Fellow,explained that it isone ofsix companion piecesconcerning media theory, its theoretical predecessors, its status in the 1960s and recent attempts link ittoothertheories. "Theory in the Early Ageoflntelligem Machines; Kittler. Luhmann and the Holy Posliluman AllianceofGennan 'Media Science ,., addresses this panicularquestion in light of Rudolf Maresch's and Niels Werber's recent volume, Kommunikation Medien Macht. Geoffr~ Wimhrop. Young With impressive alacrity WinthropYoung managed to make the abstruse ideas of these communication theories accessible by providing points of entry via his commentary on the contemporary conjecture pursuant to their proposed combination. He adumbrated the obstacles of such a union by asserting that lIle mergercould be more readi Iy explained in terms of the issues that both panics oppose rather than in terms of their common interests. Winthrop-Young compared the scenario to Schopenhauer's parable about the precarious situation of Page /2 German Culture News two porcupines coming together in order toovercomethecoldofwinter. However. he organized his analysis along an axis of issues that the Kinlerian and Luhmannian schools have both abandoned or excised from their respective investigations of the materialities of standardized information input and the evolution ofthe understanding and meaning emerge out ofcontingent communicative output. He formulated it as set of farewells that they have bid to the human subject. communication. smooth continuity and emandpatorytheorizing. Thecorrcsponding conventions inherited from discourse analysis and phenomenology come together in their shared bias IOward describing what is rather than directing towards liberation. Both schools conceptualize history in terms of fundamental discontinuities. And they both replace the conventional understanding of communication as something rooted in consciousness with a notion of mediation as communication. Ultimately. in spite of these points of confluence that set their rejection of the hermeneutical tradition and the Frankfurt School into relief, Winthrop-Young is deeply skeptical about the possibility of integrating their divergent uses of key terms and concepts such as "information," "communication" and "media" into a common framework. Winthrop-Young focused on media as one of the terms that evinces the concep!Ual incompatibilities between the two that are bound 10 thwart this attempt at a .merger. The audience that filled 181 Goldwin Smith to its capacity was eagerto interrogate Prof. Winthrop- Young about his introductory remarks and his essay. The questions about individual terms and passages evolved into inquiries about particular themes and Winthrop-Young's position in relation to his report about the porcupines in his paper. He addressed queries about the provocative tone of the posthuman discourse with its proto-fascistic overtones celebrating the elimination of the human and his interest in probing these theorists who run counter to the humanities in search of productive insights. Professors Bathrick and Hohendahl were especially interested in examining Winthrop-Young about his own position in light of his impartial, didactic introduction to these competing theorists. This questioning crystallized into an analysis of the reconciliation required for an accounting of the social component within these theories. Fran;. PI!/er Hugoohl is a gradUDtt studl!nt in the Depanml!nl ofGerman Su4dies a1 Cornell. •••••••• Jaiml!Y Fishl!r In his paper, "Who's Watching the Rubble-Kids? Youth. Pedagogy, and PoliticsinDEFA'sRubble-Films," Jaimey Fisher offered a reading of the rubblefilm genre. that is, films made in the "rubble" of Germany by German directors between 1945 and 1951. Fisher argued how many films ofthis genre moved youth and generational discourse to the symbolic center of "adult" feature films in order to defuse and resolve intense political and social trauma. Featuring as they do a Heimkehrer, a male returning from the war, the films depict a complicated masculinity ~one that is ambivalent about being home after the war~ via the terrain ofgenerational difference and a peculiarly contradictory representation of youth. Fisher focused on the role that youth discourse plays in the reconstruction of this threatened masculinity: the films shift the siteofsocial crisis from the inadequate adult male to a crisis of delinquent youth, which can then be more easily rehabilitated. Fisher argued thai in describing how masculinity is constituted and perpetuated. many scholars (including Kaja Silvennan) underemphasize the role of the paternal function and stable genera- tional difference in propping up the masculine subject. In this historical moment, paternity and generational difference were threatened and therefore attended to ~ andeventually reconstructed ~ in a conspicuous. emphatic manner. Fisherconnected this analysis of masculinity to the film theory ofGilles Deleuze, who understands Italian neorealism ~ Italian films from the same years ~ as a watershed in the history of the cinematic image. Deleuze, however, is not able to explain how the shift in the cinematic image is implicated in the social context of the postwar period, particularly with regard to those gender and generational instabilities described above. With an interpretive model bred of this gender and film-formal analysis. Fisher analyzed two rubble-films, Irgendwo in Berlin [Somewhere in Bertin] and Rotation [Rotation], respectively, they are the second and second-best known films of the genre. Irgendwo in Berlin is preoccupied with the labile domestic social constellation so prevalent in the postwar period. and stabilizes this constellation by deploying and manipulating overdetennined generational relations. According to Fisher, Rotation (Rotation, 1949), although a well-known revision of the WeimarArbeiterfilm (worker-film). is most productively analyzed within the context of the rubble-film genre and its generational operations. Rotation furthered Fisher's analysis because of its deliberate allention not only to youth's role within the traditional bourgeois family, but also to youth in the schools, an important subcultural social site for the reformulation of the nation. The film elaborates both the multiple social sites of youth as well as the film's engagement with one of the most important political discourses of the day, reeducation. The questions posed by the Colloquium participants focused in part on Fisher's reading of masculinity via generational difference as well as on the film-formal aspects of his analysis. Some participants suggested that Fisher did not attend quite enough to the function of gender in his emphasis on generation, some asked about how he understood his approach's relation to psychoanalytic fi 1m German Culture News Page 13 theory, while others challenged his elaborate readings of single images. Despite the pointed questions and heated debate, it did seem that a good timc was had by one and all at this last colloquium of the semester/year/century/mi llenium and it portended many other fruitful meetings of the ColJoquium of the Institute for German Cultural Studies in the future.- !.Lah Shafer is a graduate student in Ihe Department of Theater, Film and Dance at Cornell •••••••• (DAAD Weekend· continued from page 2) Werther, however, remained positive about the text's politics. Most influential in this context was Georg LukAcs, who portrayed Werther as a deliberate representation of {he contradictions in the bourgeois milieu, Though Lukacs admitted that Goethe was not a revolutionary, he insisted that Goethe was lodging a strong critique of bourgeois society and its division of labor - he persistently tried to connect Werther 10 the Volk. LukAcs even drew a (rather tenuous, Richardson pointed out)parallel between Werther and the French Revolution. Plenzdorf's parody of Werther, Richardson suggested, needs to be seen within the context of this complicated relationship ofthe GDR to the bourgeois literary heritage. Though the story was written as a fi1m script in 1968/69, Plenzdorf was able to publish the parody in the window of relative cultural tolerance that opened up between the 1971 rise of Erich Honecker and the 1976 Biermann affair. Richardson indicated that Plenzdorfis not critiquing the classics or Goethe per se, but rather the rigid and dogmatic cultural policy vis-a-vis these classics, Plenzdorf s novel is critical on two levels: he recontextualizes Werther's critique of society in the GDR, and he offers a reading ofGocthe resisting thc official line on the bourgeois heritage. The novel's suicidal protagonist finds Werther in the bathroom and makes what would havc been regarded as desecrati ng use of his Goethe. Edgar's death is left vague, but the episode asserts that one must not maintain a hollowly adoring respect for the bourgeois literary heritage, - Jaim~ FisMr is a graduate student in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University. Herbert Deinert from the German Studies Department. opened the afternoon session with a paper entitled "Faust, Part L The key players and their agenda:' His paper addressed the universality of Goethe'sseminal text through acomparative analysis of Faustian and pilgrim narratives. Dcinert began by arguing for the necessity of placing Faust in context- in ilS historical, visual, musical and lilcrary borrowings- and proceeded 10 examinc the critical possibilities of such comparative, analytic axes. In particular, Deincrt focused critical attcntion on the possibility for productive comparison between visual narratives of Mephistopheles, 'the principlenegator,' andGocthe's text. By pursuing such extra-linguistic relations, by historicizing the dramatic figures, context becomes not simply a backdrop but a crucial analytic maneuver for approaching such a 'classic' as Faust, Part I. Gretchen Wheelock of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, presented a paperentitlcd "Mozart's Elective Affinities: Cosi Fan Tutti," which explored the critical possibilities of the comparative space between Mozan's opera and Goethe's Elective Affinities. Indeed the very notion of' affinity,' which for Goethe was linked to the chemical notion of new alliances, is critically mobilized by Wheelock herselfto bring the 'chemistry and fatal altraclion' of the two works together in a productive dialogue. Both texts deal with two sets of couples, the dissolving and reformation oftheir bonds and the transference of mobile desire. Wheelock argues that musical affinity is central to the narrative unfolding of both texts. In Goethe's Elective Affinities, Charlolle and the Captain are seen to play a difficult work 'with ease' - their musical 'affinity' suggests from the start their compatability. Similarly, Wheelock argues that musical affinities arc crucial in understanding Mozart's ironic musical recollections. In Cosi Fan Tutti, musical clues suggest Ihal the couples with which we are presented at the sian arc mismatched - it is only in the new bonding (however temporary) that musical affini· ties emerge. Wheelock proceeded to analyze the 'sincerity' of Mozart' s music as a method of approaching the complicated couplings and 'key relations' of the libretto, arguing persuasively that attenlion to the musical irony casts the 'happy end' of Cosi Fan Tutti in a new light, Aoif~ Naughton is a graduate student in the Depanment of Comparati\!~ Uteratur~ at Cornell University. Sunday's session opened with a lecture by Nobellaureatc, Roald Hoffmann, professor of Chemistry, entitled "Human Chemistry: Goethe's Electi ve AffI.nities." After discussing a table of affinities from Goethe's time, Hoffmann suggested that Elective Affinities represents Goethe's auempts to trace chemical composition to spiritual origins. In the novel, Goethe illuminates aspects of chemistry such as polarities, dualities and eternal change. Hoffmann focused in panicular on Goethe's critique of the chemist as "ScheidekUnstler," a term which emphasizes separation. Hoffmann pointed to a passage in Eleetive Affinities where Charlotte claims that bringing things together is more important than separating them. According to Hoffmann, this statement is very prescient. in that "bringing things together" has been the primary task of synthetic chemistry in the twentieth century. He also proposed that Goethe's project of finding the spiritual origins of chemistry is still a worthy task. Hoffmann has it in his book The Same and nor the Same, which presents a Jungian view of chemistry, Goethe's privileging of synthesis over analysis was also explored by Patrick Roth, CEO of Transatlantic, whose lecture, "Goethe versus Newton," focused on Goethe's theory of light. Roth cited Goethe's hostility IOward Newton, who was the first to recognize that light can be separated into colors. Goethe rejectcd this analytical method and preferred a phenomenological approach that leaves things in their natural stale and looks at Page 14 German Culture News their impression on the observer. Roth suggests that this conflict between Goethe and Newton also reflects the polarity between natural sciences and the humanities. Newton's theories of optics laid the foundation for the electromagnetic spectrum, which allowed for major advancements in science. Yet, according to Roth, this does not mean that Goethe was absolutely wrong. Inascnse, Newton's method was too successful. Today there is a large amount of knowledge but no wisdom. Roth claims that too much knowledge dulls the senses. Complex theories need to be linked to everyday life as Richard Feynman did in QED. Roth also asserts that Goethe's phenomenological approach is not entirely false, as can be seen by contemporary scientific theories that show the linkage between the observer and the observation. The conference concluded with lectures on "Progress and Violence in Faust I and U" by Gerlinde VIm Sanford, professorof German at Syracuse University and Herbert Deinert. Sanford noted many examples ofviolence in Faust. Thedrama begins with Faust's contemplation ofsuicide. Throughout the drama, Faust commits other acts of violence in his process ofstriving forward. Though necessary for Faust such striving also necessarily involves error. Sanford suggested that any kind of action compels guilt because action entails violence and therefore guilt. However, as evidenced by Faust's final speech, Goethe's central message is that the task of humans is to be as active as possible. Although that activity causes violence, it is only through striving that one can be redeemed and achieve immor tality. She noted the importance of the blessed boys who take Faust's dead body to a higher sphere. Sanford proposed that while Faust wants to reach the sphere of pure activity through suicide in Faust I. in Faust //. he attains this state not through violence but through the love of the blessed boys. It shows that ideally love and compassion enable progress, not violence. Sanford concluded that while Goetheopposed violence he is ultimately a realist and sees violence as inevitable. Deinert's lecture focused on colonialism in Act V of Faust II. There, Faust wants to build a new civilization without violently dispossessing natives. By reclaim- ing land from the sea, he attempts to create assets without victims. However, to build his observation platfonn, he has to evict Baucis and Philemon, the native residents oftheplotofland he needs. Theyarc killed and their house and trees are burned. This can be read as representative of colonial tactics. In Faust's final vision. however, he imagines a future society of interdependent people pan:icipating in a democracy without an overlord. Deinert argued that critics arc incorrect in assuming that this society is a reference to America. America in the late 1820s and early 1830s could hardly have been considered utopian. At this time, it was characterized by war and violence against Native Americans. Furthennore, the Monroe Doctrine had created a policy of non-interference with existing colonies. In other words, young Americadid not live uptoits promise of being a nation impervious to the violent tactics of colonialism. Therefore, Faust's vision is not of America but of a tomorrow that will never come. Tryingto work toward it is a fundamental aspect of human striving, but the perfect society will only come about at the end of history or in the afterlife. - Erica Dotrhoff is a graduau .SIIuJent in the Department o/German Studies. (DAAD Summer - continued/rom page 4) Gennany, namely the Backjisch, or the young, sexually inexperienced girl. When Assistant Professor Jeffrey Schneider from Vassar College regretfully had to leave the seminar early, achapterfrom his dissertation that he is currently revising for book publication was read. Concentrating on a close reading of Thcodor Fontane's Effi Briest, he demonstrated the closely spun weave of masculinity, materialism and homoeroticism in thetext and in other historical sources he situated alongside the text. Work continued with a chapter from Anne Simmon's dissertation. which she completed at CUNY. Using her concept of "visual hysteria," she analyzed the anxieties of the male, rather than the female, bourgeois subject. through her interpretation of the work of Gustav Klimt in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Rose Ellen Lessey, a graduate student from the Engli sh Department, distributed her paper on illness and identity in Todd Haynes's film Safe, which provided the seminar with a nodal point to discuss the incomplete and inadequate encounter between the di scou~es offeminist and queer theories. After five continual days of meeting during the final week of the seminar, the group met for one last time to discuss Professor Martin's thought provoking article, recently published in Differences, "Success and Its Failures." This text focuses on some of the more urgent contemporary issues concerning the universityas an institution and its management of "excellence," through an analysis of Bill Readings's and Martha Nussbaum's recently published books on this topic. Her article's emphasis on the desirability ofa critical exchange between the humanities and the sciences, enabled the seminar to renect on issues of institutionalization, especially in tenns ofour own relationship to knowledge, power. and our particular disciplines in the climate outlined in the article.- Anna Parkinson is a graduate student in the Departmelll o/Gemwn Studies al Cornell. •••••••• (hoYosl . cOlllinued/rom page I) deans, faculty, and students of all our colleges. It is an exciting and challenging time forthe university, and I look forward to working to enhance the strength and richness of our programs and the diversity of our community." Philip E. Lewis,the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, offered the following comment on Martin's designation: "Biddy Martin is a brilliant scholarofinternational stature in the fields of Gennan studies and women's studies. During her more than 16 years here at Cornell, she has proven herself to be a charismatic teacher and a fonnidably articulate spokesperson for the cause of liberal education. She is also acolleague of exceptionally strong commitment and high integrity in whom the members ofthis German Culture News Page 15 community can place their unreserved confidence. President Rawlings is fonunate to be able toenlist her as his principal panncr in preserving Cornell' s greatlradi· lions and in promoling educalional innovalion. Her associatcs in lhe universily adminislration can anlicipatc with pleasure the ebullienl personality. generous spirit. and beneficent leadership she will bring 10 the office of the proVOSt:' Manin. professor of German slUdies and women's studies. has served as senior associale dean of the College of Arts & Sciences since 1997. A member of lhe Cornell faculty since 198.1. her previous adminislrative responsibilities have included serving as the chair of the Departmenl ofGerman Studies from 1994-1997, associate director of the Program of Women's Studies 1993-94. graduate field representative for German studies 199196, and as graduate field representati ve 1992-96 and co-founder of the field of lesbian and gay sludies. She was the recipient of the prestigious Clark Distinguished Teaching Award of the College of Am and Sciences in 1990. Manin is the amhor of numerous books and ankles. including Femininirr Pluyed SrruiRhr: The Significance of Bein}! Le~'­ bian and Woman and Modernity: The (Lfe) Styles ofLou Am/reus-Salome. She is prescntlycollaborating with Carol Maxwell Miller of Cornell's psychology depanmenl on a book on child analysis and play therapy thaI eJlplores lhe relationship between traditional psychoanalysis ,md contemporary definitions ofplay and analysis. She isoneoftheedilorsofNew German Critique. an interdiscipl inaryjourna of German cullure sludies. and has served or serves on the editorial boards and staff of such publications as Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Gay and Lesbian Quanerly, Diacritics, Signs, and Women in Gcrman. She received her Ph.D. summa cum lauda in German lilerature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985and her B.A. in English literature from the College of William and Mary in 1973, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Sheisa native of Lynchburg. Virginia.· By pemli~'sion of the Corm-II Unil'Yrsiry Nt',,,,"s Ser\";ct (l.ewen:. . cOn/in/ml from p