„Wir Nichtgnostiker“: Die Hitler-Engelhardt-Parallele in Christian Krachts Imperium

In 2012 Georg Diez provoked a literary scandal with his review of Christian Kracht’s novel Imperium. Since then, almost ninety informed studies which show an ongoing academic interest in the book have been published. Many of these studies attempted to explain the apparently failing analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt that the novel claimed in an irritating manner. Nevertheless, none of them took an esoteric approach which Kracht himself suggested in an interview with Denis Scheck as a starting point for their analyses, although esoteric references seem to be an ignored constant in Kracht’s oeuvre since Tristesse Royale. Hence, by tracing this esoteric intertextuality in the whole of Kracht’s oeuvre and linking it to the references which Kracht makes to right-wing ideologies since Faserland, it will be shown that there actually does exist an analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt in Imperium which aims to deconstruct Hitler mythemes by ridiculizing Engelhardt. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the interrelations between Kracht’s texts create a rhizomatic network of intertextuality that dissolves the boarders between external references and self-references.

How Not to Become Tolerant: Habitus and Affects in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise

The coincidences and phantasms that open Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise reappear throughout the entire drama and even bring about its happy ending. While the usual interpretation of the plot maintains that the illusions held by the protagonists of the play – such as their superstitions, unrestrained affects, and prejudices – are overcome via a learning process and transformed into tolerance, I propose a different view. In this article I argue, firstly, that these previous illusions are already slightly enlightened, rather than completely dim and dull, and, secondly, that this process only ostensibly leads to tolerance. As a consequence, my analysis focuses on the negotiation between tolerance and intolerance. Finally, I arrive at the conclusion that the maid Daja actually represents tolerance in a better way than the protagonists because she is the only one from whom tolerant endurance is demanded. The analysis of the affective patterns of the play demonstrate that Nathan the Wise can not only be read as a parable of tolerance, but also as a parable of the formation of a privileged habitus within the realm of the family.

The Exemplarity of Particulars: Arendt on Validity

When Hannah Arendt delivered her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in 1970, she held a seminar on Kant’s Critique of Judgment to explore aspects of her lecture course in greater detail. This essay probes Arendt’s seminar notes with an eye to the concept of ‘exemplary validity,’ which is at the core of her theory of judgment. Notably, her analysis repeatedly draws on the force of examples, that is, the force of ‘exemplary validity.’ Her theorization of judgment, itself inevitably subject to her own judgment, can be understood as an enactment of and commentary on the very matter she discusses. It is not by chance but rather symptomatic that her argumentation is permeated by strategically placed examples that seek to persuade us by dint of their exemplary validity.

Satirische Metabolistik: Jean Pauls Skizze „Über die Schriftstellerei“

Jean Paul’s collection Grönländische Prozesse, oder Satirische Skizzen (1783–4/1821) has been scrutinized regarding its exuberant similes and its satirical wit, but ranked low compared to his novels. From the beginning, however, it exposes a groundbreaking strategy resonating in his more famous literary and theoretical works alike. The first sketch “On literary writing. An opusculum posthumum” converts a rhetoric of the known material world – with its diversity of life forms – into a materialistic-physiological writing (and vice versa). The text interchanges processes of transformation (e. g. ‘metabolic,’ ‘biotic,’ ‘chemical’) with techniques that are capable of changing things rhetorically. Pertaining to Jean Paul’s later analysis of antithetical wit, I suggest grasping the structure of this interchanging as a rhetorical process in itself, which can be pinpointed by the figure of antimetabole (or commutatio). Consequently, this complex dynamics is connected to transitions between ‘alive’ and ‘dead’. The status of “On literary writing” as a posthumously published draft and pseudo-poetological treatise, introduced by a fictive editor, thus exactly fits the rhetorico-physiological processes it stages and complements a genuinely anticipatory writing.