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We describe people who are “consumed” or “devoured” by
ambition as if by a predator or an out-of-control inferno. Thinkers
since deepest antiquity have raised these questions, approaching
the subject of ambition with ambivalence and often trepidation—as
when the ancient Greek poet Hesiod proposed a differentiation
between the good and the bad goddess Eris. Indeed, ambition as a
longing for immortal fame seems to be one of the unique hallmarks
of the human species. While philosophy has touched only
occasionally on the problem of burning ambition, sociology,
psychoanalysis, and world literature have provided rich and more
revealing descriptions and examples of its shaping role in human
history. Drawing on a long and varied tradition of writing on this
topic, ranging from the works of Homer through Shakespeare, Freud,
and Kafka and from the history of ancient Greece and Rome to the
Italian Renaissance and up to the present day (to modernity and the
current neoliberal era), Eckart Goebel explores our driving passion
for recognition — that insatiable hunter in the mirror — and
power.
After 1933, New York City gave shelter to many leading German and
German-Jewish intellectuals. Stripped of their German citizenship
by the Nazi-regime, these public figures either stayed in the New
York area or moved on to California and other places. This
compendium, adopting the title of a famous volume published by
Klaus and Erika Mann in 1939, explores the impact the US, and NYC
in particular, had on these authors as well as the influence they
in turn exerted on US intellectual life. Moreover, it addresses the
transformations that took place in the exiled intellectuals'
thinking when it was translated into another language and addressed
to an American audience. Among the individuals presented in this
volume, are such prominent names as T.W. Adorno, H. Arendt, W.
Benjamin, E. Bloch, B. Brecht, S. Kracauer, the Mann family, S.
Morgenstern, and E. Panofsky. The authors of the essays in this
compendium were free to choose the angle (biography, theory,
politics) or aspect (a single work, a personal constellation)
deemed best to illuminate the given intellectual's work. Acclaimed
NYC photographer Fred Stein, a German-Jewish refugee from Dresden,
produced numerous portraits of exiled intellectuals and artists. A
selection of these compelling portraits is reproduced in this book
for the first time.
Die fortgesetzte gegenstandstheoretische Debatte in der
Literaturwissenschaft fuhrte zu auch institutionell folgenreichen
Grenzuberschreitungen hin zur Anthropologie, Semiotik, Medien-,
Informations- und Kulturtheorie und damit zu einer Infragestellung
traditioneller Verfahren, Inhalte und Aufgaben des Fachs. Der
vorliegende Band gibt Auskunft zum state of the art im letzten Jahr
des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die gesammelten Essays bieten einen fur
Fachleute und Interessierte gleichermassen lohnenden Uberblick uber
jungste Tendenzen und Transformationsprozesse, sie orientieren uber
institutionelle, politische, wissenschaftsgeschichtliche und im
engeren Sinne methodologische Aspekte gegenwartiger
Literaturforschung. Die Herausgeber haben die Beitrage unter
folgenden Fragestellungen gegliedert: Was ist Literatur? Kann man
Texte verstehen? Hat Literatur Realitatsbezug? Was geschieht neben
Literatur? Was kann Literaturforschung? Der funfundsiebzigste
Geburtstag von Eberhard Lammert, dem Grundungsdirektor des Berliner
Zentrums fur Literaturforschung, war den Autorinnen und Autoren
Anlass zu diesem Resumee."
An Biographien und am Schreibverhalten von Autoren zwischen der
Mitte des 18. und der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts, der, klassischen'
Epoche des auf sich gestellten "freien Schriftstellers," sind
wiederkehrende Verhaltensmuster zu beobachten. Auf Regularien,
denen auch die betonte Individualitat unterworfen bleibt, lenkt der
Band den Blick, vielfach in Auseinandersetzung mit der Feldtheorie
Bourdieus. Die Studien nehmen die Affinitat zwischen dem freien
Kunstler und dem freien Unternehmer ernst. Sie analysieren den Hang
zu aristokratischer Selbsteinschatzung, der haufig zum Ausloser
einer nicht selten umfassenden Zeit- und Gesellschaftskritik wird,
beschreiben die einsamkeitsgenerierende Exterritorialitat, die in
Umbruchsituationen umgekehrt die Macht des Wortes auch im
Schulterschluss mit der neuen Macht erprobt, die Sehnsucht des
Einzelgangers, einmal auch die Stimme Vieler, womoglich eines
ganzen Volkes zu sein. Und thematisieren folglich auch eine
mogliche extreme Folge: das Exil. Sichtbar wird eine permanente
Dialektik zwischen poesie pure und litterature engagee. Diese
Dialektik und nicht etwa Fixierungen in der einen oder anderen
Richtung sind der Epoche des "freien Schriftstellers" eigentumlich.
Zugleich reflektieren die Studien das intensivierte Bewusstsein,
dass gegenwartig eine Hegemonie der gelesenen oder unbegleitet
vorgetragenen Literatur abgelost wird von einer Vielfalt
literarisch-audiovisueller Darstellungsformen."
We describe people who are “consumed” or “devoured” by
ambition as if by a predator or an out-of-control inferno. Thinkers
since deepest antiquity have raised these questions, approaching
the subject of ambition with ambivalence and often trepidation—as
when the ancient Greek poet Hesiod proposed a differentiation
between the good and the bad goddess Eris. Indeed, ambition as a
longing for immortal fame seems to be one of the unique hallmarks
of the human species. While philosophy has touched only
occasionally on the problem of burning ambition, sociology,
psychoanalysis, and world literature have provided rich and more
revealing descriptions and examples of its shaping role in human
history. Drawing on a long and varied tradition of writing on this
topic, ranging from the works of Homer through Shakespeare, Freud,
and Kafka and from the history of ancient Greece and Rome to the
Italian Renaissance and up to the present day (to modernity and the
current neoliberal era), Eckart Goebel explores our driving passion
for recognition — that insatiable hunter in the mirror — and
power.
According to Freud's later works, we do not really feel well or
free within civilization. Our discontent never disappears, and we
shall never become completely reliable members of society. Alcohol
already suffices, Freud tells us, to ruin the fragile architecture
of sublimations. Since 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle, '
sublimation seems to be nothing more than a euphemism for
suppressing the drives. We sublimate because we did not get or were
not allowed to have what we 'actually' wanted. Is sublimation a
mere surrogate or perhaps even the name psychoanalysis found for
'theoria' in the twentieth century? With Freud as its pivot, Goebel
provides an intellectual history of sublimation, which also serves
as an introduction to other key ideas associated with the authors
discussed, such as Schopenhauer's philosophy of music, the will to
power in Nietzsche, the structure of Freudian psychoanalysis,
Adorno's concept of modern art, or Lacanian ethics. In examining
both its prehistory and reception, Goebel argues that sublimation
can be reconsidered as the road toward an individual and social
life beyond discontent.
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