Culture and Barbarism: description
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Clemens Pornschlegel, Department of German Literature, LMU - Prof. Florian T. Schneider, Department of German Literature, LMU
Despite the fact, that culture and barbarism are commonly considered as opposites, cultures are not only founded in acts of violence, but have also to deal with them during their history in order to assure their further existence. While aggressions from outside (e. g. from other cultures or nations) have been reflected ever since and not at last as propagandistic means of foreign policies, the own cruel and violent potentials have mostly been suppressed not only in the cultural memory, but in actual politic argumentations as well: The “barbarians” are always the others, while the own violence is characterized as forced reaction, justified intervention or mere self-defence. A change of situation occurred not before the end of the nineteenth century, when philosophers like Nietzsche or artists like Marinetti explicitly declared violence as a common, useful and necessary cultural good. From this point of view even the until then unthinkable atrocities of World War I. could be looked upon as the birth of a new mankind (e. g. Ernst Jünger), while on the other side of the political spectrum violence was regarded as an unavoidable circumstance of revolutionary change, too (e. g. Brecht, Benjamin). In a less affirmative but nevertheless urging way, the question returned after World War II., when thinkers like Adorno began to reflect violence as one of the evil roots, haunting a mislead western culture from its ancient beginnings – a pessimistic repetition of the point of view, from where the reflexion of culture and barbarism once started.
For it is not to be taken as a mere accident, that it were German writers, who began to deal with violence as a productive cultural power, the course will set its focus on the German philosophical and literary tradition, starting with Nietzsche and leading over Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ernst Jünger, Walter Benjamin, Bert Brecht and Gottfried Benn to Theodor W. Adorno. Thereby the subject can be divided into three different points of interest:
1. Reflexions on violence and culture in the Greek antiquity (Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Adorno);
2. War as a surface-exhibition of normally underlying cultural structures (Jünger, Brecht, Benjamin, Freud);
3. Violence as a means of imperial and colonial politics and fantasies (Benn, Kafka);
Meanwhile, banned again and officially abolished as a means of cultural evolution, violence has obviously not disappeared under the conditions of a globalized world. At the end of the course therefore will take place an outlook on further developments of the subject, guided by current philosophical theories (e. g. Hardt/Negri, Agamben).
Bibliography:
- Theodor W. Adorno: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (1951)
- ders./Max Horkheimer: Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944)
- Walter Benjamin: Erfahrung und Armut (1933)
- ders.: Über den Begriff der Geschichte (1939)
- ders.: Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1921)
- ders.: Kafka-Essays (1928-34)
- Gottfried Benn: Schutt I-III (1922)
- ders.: Dorische Welt (1934)
- Bertolt Brecht: Die Ausnahme und die Regel (19)
- ders.: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (19)
- Sigmund Freud: Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod (1915)
- ders.: Warum Krieg? (1933)
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Elektra (1902)
- Ernst Jünger: Das Wäldchen 125 (1925)
- ders.: Feuer und Blut (1925)
- Franz Kafka: In der Strafkolonie (1919)
- ders.: Ein Bericht für eine Akademie (1917)
- ders.: Ein Landarzt (1918)
- Friedrich Nietzsche: Der griechische Staat (1872)
- ders.: Ecce Homo (1889)
- Jakob Taubes: Vom Kult zur Kultur (1954)
For it is not to be taken as a mere accident, that it were German writers, who began to deal with violence as a productive cultural power, the course will set its focus on the German philosophical and literary tradition, starting with Nietzsche and leading over Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ernst Jünger, Walter Benjamin, Bert Brecht and Gottfried Benn to Theodor W. Adorno. Thereby the subject can be divided into three different points of interest:
1. Reflexions on violence and culture in the Greek antiquity (Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Adorno);
2. War as a surface-exhibition of normally underlying cultural structures (Jünger, Brecht, Benjamin, Freud);
3. Violence as a means of imperial and colonial politics and fantasies (Benn, Kafka);
Meanwhile, banned again and officially abolished as a means of cultural evolution, violence has obviously not disappeared under the conditions of a globalized world. At the end of the course therefore will take place an outlook on further developments of the subject, guided by current philosophical theories (e. g. Hardt/Negri, Agamben).
Bibliography:
- Theodor W. Adorno: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (1951)
- ders./Max Horkheimer: Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944)
- Walter Benjamin: Erfahrung und Armut (1933)
- ders.: Über den Begriff der Geschichte (1939)
- ders.: Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1921)
- ders.: Kafka-Essays (1928-34)
- Gottfried Benn: Schutt I-III (1922)
- ders.: Dorische Welt (1934)
- Bertolt Brecht: Die Ausnahme und die Regel (19)
- ders.: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (19)
- Sigmund Freud: Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod (1915)
- ders.: Warum Krieg? (1933)
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Elektra (1902)
- Ernst Jünger: Das Wäldchen 125 (1925)
- ders.: Feuer und Blut (1925)
- Franz Kafka: In der Strafkolonie (1919)
- ders.: Ein Bericht für eine Akademie (1917)
- ders.: Ein Landarzt (1918)
- Friedrich Nietzsche: Der griechische Staat (1872)
- ders.: Ecce Homo (1889)
- Jakob Taubes: Vom Kult zur Kultur (1954)
