KulturPoetik 2008, Issue 1

Articles

• Stephanie Stockhorst:
  Geschichte(n) der Menschheit. Zur Narrativität der historischen Kulturanthropologie in der Spätaufklärung (Details)
  Abstract
  Using examples of different types of text, by Adelung, Wieland, and Wezel, this article seeks to explore the relationship between cultural anthropology and narrativity in the Enlightenment. All three texts generate both meaning and coherence by fusing disparate historical events into one single overarching (hi)story. By employing literary forms and devices to demonstrate their particular model of cultural anthropology, the authors reinforce the narrative construction of meaning. This way of presenting historical anthropology was made possible in and limited to the second half of the 18th century, through the agency of a new conception of history as a universal process, the discovery of man as the subject of history, and a general tendency towards narrativity in historiographical writing.
• Claude D. Conter:
  Die Entstehung der zwei Kulturen im 19. Jahrhundert (Details)
  Abstract
  When C. P. Snow introduced his much-debated thesis of the Two Cultures in 1959, the origin of the two paradigms of the artistic and scientific modes of perception was not recognized. This paper aims to remedy this shortcoming. It explains how literature itself contributed substantially to the growing rivalry between the Two Cultures. It did this primarily as a result of the professionalisation of the literary industry in the 1830s, as shown in the increasing influence of economics and importance of technology. The emergence of the Two Cultures continues the lines of divergence of two rival concepts of literature, »belles lettres« and »popular literature«. This process of differentiation is accompanied by the loss of the discursive function held by literature since the Enlightenment.
• Christof Hamann:
  Verwundern, Entwundern, Disziplinieren. Hans Meyer bearbeitet den Kilimanjaro (Details)
  Abstract
  This essay analyses the travel reports of Mount Kilimanjaro by Hans Meyer, the first person known to have climbed it; it takes a structural-functional approach. Even though Ostafrikanische Gletscherfahrten (1890), Hochtouren im tropischen Afrika (1923), etc. are factual texts, they contain unexpectedly literary features which bring the scientific research reports out of their specialist discursive niche and also give them an ideological ›charge‹. At the centre of my article is an investigation of the symbolic structures by means of which the language of mountaineering is linked to other forms of discourse (erotic, religious, military and national). At the same time, the role of the performative acts of christening and naming is discussed, as well as their function in the power relationship between the German colonisers and the colonised.
• Stefan Bub:
  Phonograph und Grammophon bei Thomas Mann und Michel Leiris (Details)
  Abstract
  The invention of the phonograph and gramophone at the end of the nineteenth century that made it possible to preserve the sound of voices both fascinated and disquieted contemporary authors. Further, the passages from Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and Michel Leiris’s autobiography La règle du jeu examined in the present article deal with these machines as objects having auras, and with the impression made by their sound. At the same time, these texts highlight in different ways the disturbing noises caused by technical imperfections. These are linked in the literature to experiences of the startling discontinuity of time and awareness of death.
• Rainer Landvogt:
  Des Hörers gesammelte Stillen. Zum Sampling von Musik auf CDs (Details)
  Abstract
  Proceeding from Peter Handke’s poetological statement that emptiness is frequently both the point of departure and the goal of aesthetic effort, this essay examines the silences that occur within music or before and after pieces of music. The current cultural practice of individuals sampling music tracks on CD results in the creation of a special form of silence occurring close to music: the hiatus. Based on a provisional systematization of the sources of the sampled tracks, the essay elucidates various functions of the hiatus, one of them being to provide individuals with a ›secret‹ place in the realm of music.

Forum

• Jens Loescher:
  Kultur als Gedächtnis. Deutungskämpfe im literarischen Feld der Nachwende (Details)
  Abstract
  In this article I wish to propose a structure for a field of literature in the 1990s. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory, the notion of communicative or cultural memory/memories serves as a means to depict ›groups‹ or ›generations‹ of authors. Due to the dominance of the field of literary criticism, the dynamic in the field of literature almost comes to a halt. Although the major debates of the ›Berlin republic‹ are furnished by writers’ biographical or aesthetic ›material‹ (by Christa Wolf, Walser, Grass, Sebald), there are no strategies for making distinctions within the field of literature. There seems to be a need for a more cultural brand of Bourdieu’s ›struggles of interpretation‹; it is not symbolic capital but symbols of remembrance they focus on. Finally, my original interest seems to weave through the text like a thread: the way West German authors dealt with their East German counterparts, who found ›their‹ positions in the field occupied.

KulturKlassiker

• Misia Sophia Doms:
  Max Weber (1864-1920), Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904/05 und 1920) (Details)
  

Reviews

• Ralf Bogner:
  Literatur und letzter Wille: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Testaments
  Imre Kurdi, Reden über den Tod hinaus. Untersuchungen zum ›literarischen‹ Testament. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang 2007. 294 S. (Details)
  
• Benjamin Specht:
  Über fiktionale Experimente und experimentelle Fiktionen
  Marcus Krause/Nicolas Pethes (Hg.), Literarische Experimentalkulturen. Poetologien des Experiments im 19. Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2005. 307 S. (Details)
  
• Thomas Schmidt:
  Diskursive Lockerungen
  Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Lob des Sports. Aus dem Amerikanischen(1) von Georg Deggerich. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 2005. 176 S. (Details)
  
• Björn Weyand:
  Die viele Theorie und das bisschen Wirklichkeit. Überblick und neue Einblicke in die Wirkmächtigkeit der Fotografie
  (1) Bernd Stiegler, Theoriegeschichte der Photographie. München: Fink 2006. 472 S.
  (2) Ders. Bilder der Photographie. Ein Album photographischer Metaphern. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 2006. 276 S.
  (3) Peter Geimer (Hg.), Ordnungen der Sichtbarkeit. Fotografie in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technologie. Frankfurt/M.: SUhrkamp 2002. 444 S. (Details)
  
• Matthias Schöning:
  Praktische Literaturwissenschaft?
  Susanne Kaul/Rüdiger Bittner (Hg.), Fiktionen der Gerechtigkeit. Literatur – Film – Philosophie – Recht. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005. 196 S. (Details)
  
• Sigrid G. Köhler:
  Das ›Versprechenstier‹ Mensch zwischen Recht, Moral und Sprache
  Manfred Schneider (Hg.), Die Ordnung des Versprechens. Naturrecht – Institution – Sprechakt. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2005. 423 S. (Details)
  
• Larson Powell:
  Form und Formen der Kultur?
  Dirk Baecker, Form und Formen der Kommunikation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2005. 285 S. (Details)
  
• Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert:
  Healing Powers and Undesired Side Effects of Contemporary Theory: A Whimsical Philosophical Pharmacy
  Jochen Hörisch, Theorie-Apotheke. Eine Handreichung zu den humanwissenschaftlichen Theorien der letzten fünfzig Jahre, einschließlich ihrer Risiken und Nebenwirkungen. Frankfurt/M.: Eichborn Verlag 2005. 323 S. (Details)
  

KulturLiteratur

• New Publications (Details)