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Despite its name, documenta's primary concerns are neither with the
simple documentation of individual artists and their work nor with
developments in art history, but instead with providing a
historical space where art reflects and comments on social
constellations and political or social change, or demands it
through art interventions. documenta is not only a historical
testimony and event, but also a show at which-through the medium of
art-self-interpretation becomes the catalyst for debate and
historical change. For the first time, this book places the history
of documenta in the context of the political, cultural and societal
development of Germany during the second half of the twentieth
century, illustrating how art and history can be explored in terms
of a mutually dependent relationship.
German jurist and legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)
significantly influenced Western political and legal thinking in
the last century, yet his life and work have also stirred
considerable controversy. While his ideas have been used and
diffused by prominent philosophers on both the left and the right,
such as Jurgen Habermas and Leo Strauss, his Nazi-era past,
especially his active efforts to remove Jewish influence from
German law, has cast a cloud over his life and oeuvre. Still, his
many supporters have generally been successful in claiming that
Schmitt's was an ""antisemitism of opportunity,"" a temporary
affectation to gain favor with the Nazis. In ""Carl Schmitt and the
Jews"", available in English for the first time, historian Raphael
Gross vigorously repudiates this ""opportunism thesis."" Through a
reading of Schmitt's corpus, some of which became available only
after his death, Gross highlights the importance of the ""Jewish
Question"" on the breadth of Schmitt's work. According to Gross,
Schmitt's antisemitism was at the core of his work - before,
during, and after the Nazi era. His influential polarities of
""friend and foe,"" ""law and nomos,"" ""behemoth and Leviathan,""
and ""ketechon and Antichrist"" emerge from a conceptual template
in which ""the Jew"" is defined as adversary, undermining the
Christian order with secularization. The presence of this template
at the heart of Schmitt's work, Gross contends, calls for a major
reassessment of Schmitt's role within contemporary cultural and
legal theory.
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