The Self and the Others:

1

• The Self and the Others
• Identity, Gender and Ethnicity
• in German Culture around 1800

Week 3 Selves and Others in (Pre) Romanticism
2
The Subject and the Object in (Pre)
Romanticism.

• This is a lecture on two generations of writers
  often strictly divided from each other the
  so-called Classicists (here Goethe and Schiller)
  and the Romantics. They have something in common.
  
• They are all reacting to philosophical and
  literary context (mid-eighteenth century) that
  seemed to place the subject and the object
  (to an extent a self and other) in
  opposition.
• This raised questions as to the following issues
• Identity? Who determines what is the subject
  and object are?
• Knowledge? What can they know of each other?
• Communication? Do they recognise each other as
  equivalent subjects? How do love and
  language play a role here?
• Irreducible? Can these categories be overcome?
• These categories find themselves reproduced in
  thought and literature between 1770s and 1830s.
  They can stand for relationships between
  individuals (a man and a woman), or groups (the
  two genders collectively, different cultures, man
  and nature) etc.

3
The Subject and the Object in (Pre)
Romanticism II.

• What was feeding this tendency?
• Not only the classifying tendency of the
  Enlightenment but Philosophy.
• Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte created
  philosophical systems that, ultimately, placed
  absolute truth outside
• the subject vs. the other the subject in
  isolation, restricted to itself
• Both literary traditions (Classical or
  Pre-Romantic and Romantic) have been credited
  with being the cause of the problem and with
  offering the solution!
• Both charged with producing rigid systems that
  set up a subject (often white male) exerting
  representational power over an other, which it
  dominates, fears or idealizes (gaze)
• Both also seen as creating texts which start to
  undermine the divisions between self and other!
• We shall consider a range of texts by Goethe,
  Schiller and the Romantics

4
Goethes Early Poetry

• Often seen as depicting dualisms man and woman,
  man and nature
• Some critics have contended that this self
  never knows the other and is locked into
  relationships of fear of and longing for
  knowledge of/ love of/ communication with that
  other.
• More recent critics (David Wellberry) see Goethe
  as part of a continuum towards Romanticism
  (though not equating him with it) - Goethes
  poems have a specular quality
• They dramatize the selfs isolation or
  disconnection from the world/ origin
• They perform the selfs attempt to affirm itself
  through its encounters with others, literal or
  figurative
• They point to the role language plays in
  mediating between self and other when successful
  a bilateral connection between loving selves
  (specualrity), although this can also be
  ambiguous. See Wanderers Nachtlied.

5
Goethes Intercultural Project West-östlicher
Diwan

• Context of the project who was Hafiz?
• The scope of the project the various books.
  The form of the Diwan intercultural?
• Issues of co-authorship Marianne von Willemer
  (1784 1860)
• Gender in the Diwan
• Praise and Criticism
• tbc

6
Schiller, Bildung and the Other

• Schillers Aesthetic Theory
• The sick or wounded modern subject
• Aesthetics as the solution, essay Über die
  ästhetische Erzeihung des Menschen
• Formtrieb and Stofftrieb
• NB the influence of Kant and notion of the
  sublime the danger disintegration of the self
• The Fate of the Other in Schillers poetry
• How is the other presented in the poem Das
  verschleierte Bild zu Sais? A gazed at other?
  Can this other be known? Does it have gender?
  Gender of the gaze? The nature of women?
• How are women presented in the other poems?
  Their relationship to the notion of Bildung
  who is to be educated and how? What does Behler
  mean by the hidden violence of Schillers
  Bildung?
• See Constantin Behler, Nostalgic Teleology
• Christa Bürger, Leben schreiben. Die Klassik,
  Die Romantik und der Ort der Frau

7
Romanticism I - Key concepts

• The Romantic Circle
• In its earliest phase, based around the
  university city of Jena (1796-1806). Johann
  Gottlieb Fichte Professor of Philosophy at the
  University. Novalis, the brothers Schlegel, Tieck
  et al.
• His Wissenschaftslehre produced a theory of
  subjectivity. The Romantics based their theory on
  a critical development of Fichtes ideas.
• Influence also of French Revolution (1789) the
  early Romantics not a literal drive for political
  revolution, but enthusiasm for revolutionary
  change through culture - Poësie
• The Critique of Fichte Identity and Poësie
• Das Wesen der Identität lässt sich nur in einem
  Scheinsatz aufstellen.
• Wir verlassen das Identische, um es
  darzustellen. Novalis Fichte-Studien, 1796.
• Identity meaning truth reality (who we
  are and how the world is) remain
  transcendental, cannot be known in their
  entirety. Therefore, we represent this to
  ourselves in language.
• This representation is a Scheinsatz, an
  appearance or illusion designed to communicate
  possibility of truth, without telling it wholly.
• The Poet sees this for what it is and attempts to
  change the world in a revolutionary fashion by
  re-writing the fiction of truth/identity Poësie

8
Romanticism II

• Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801).
• The legend and the man the myth and Sophie
  von Kuhn
• In fact a key theorist in the development of
  Romantic Theory
• Model of Subject and Object Intersubjectivity
• Statt Nicht-Ich Du
• Feminist perspectives static fantasy of woman
  or other cultures as the selfs own private
  other Regula Fankhauser,
• Martha Helfer, Alice Kuzniar