Carolin Duttlinger Boeken

An accessible, comprehensive introduction to the work, life and times of one of the twentieth century's most important writers.

Accessible essays place Kafka in historical, political and cultural context, providing new and often unexpected perspectives on his works.

Franz Kafka was fascinated by photography, a medium which for him came to encapsulate both the attractions and the pitfalls of modern life. In the first detailed study of photography in Kafka's work, which includes more than 20 illustrations, Carolin Duttlinger gives close readings of the most important prose works, as well as the letters and diaries.

This volume assembles the select proceedings of an international conference held at the University of Cambridge in March 2002. The conference took its cue from the 'performative turn', which has put issues of performance and performativity at the centre of current academic debate in the humanities. The volume aims to show the ways in which German Studies have been turning towards questions of the performative in recent years. On the one hand, this involves an increased interest in the performing arts in the scholarship and teaching of German Studies and a growing understanding of the literary text too, as a performed process as much as a finished object, on the other, an incorporation of theories of performativity, not least in the area of gender and sexuality. The essays cover a range of performance media (theatre, film, performance art, photography) as well as the representation of turns or acts of performance in literary texts from Goethe to key contemporary writers. Together, they indicate exciting new ways forward for German Cultural Studies.

Die Frage ›Was ist der Mensch?‹ verbindet und konstituiert Walter Benjamins diverse Projekte. Allerdings bilden seine verstreuten und oftmals elliptischen Bemerkungen zur Anthropologie keinen zusammenhängenden Kommentar, keine in sich geschlossene Theorie oder Methode. Sie stehen vielmehr fast immer im Zeichen eines konkreten Untersuchungsgegenstandes. Als Sammler und Historiker, Kritiker und Rezensent stellt Benjamin – fast beiläufig – weitreichende und radikale Überlegungen zur menschlichen Natur an. Diese anthropologische Dimension des Benjaminschen Denkens erstmals systematisch zu rekonstruieren und im Kontext seiner Zeit zu verorten, ist das Ziel des vorliegenden Bandes.