Prof Sarah Colvin | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)

Papers by Prof Sarah Colvin

Routledge eBooks, Jul 18, 2022

Mit dem Stichwort "Mimesis" ist eines der vorrangigen, wenn nicht das zentrale Thema der abendlän... more Mit dem Stichwort "Mimesis" ist eines der vorrangigen, wenn nicht das zentrale Thema der abendländischen Ästhetik und Poetik aufgerufen. Dies bringt der vorliegende Band, basierend auf den Beiträgen zu einer Ringvorlesung an der FU Berlin von 2008, so nachdrücklich wie aspektreich in Erinnerung. Nicht allein die von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart reichende Kontinuität der Refl exionen über "Mimesis," über die Inklination des Menschen zum mimetischen Verhalten sowie über verschiedene mimetische Praktiken wird hier durch Vertreter verschiedener Disziplinen beleuchtet, sondern auch die Verknüpfungen des Mimesis-Konzepts mit erkenntnistheoretischen, ethischen, anthropologischen, medien-und gattungstheoretischen Fragestellungen. Deutlich wird zudem das Spektrum der divergenten, oft auch konkurrierenden Auslegungsoptionen von "Mimesis." Die Aristotelische Poetik erörtert Spielformen der Mimesis systematisch auf eine Weise, die für verschiedenste Wissensdiskurse und Darstellungtheorien anschlussfähig ist; als eine Schrift, die "Mimesis" zum poetologischen und anthropologischen Kernbegriff macht, wird sie Epochen übergreifend zum prägenden Bezugstext des Nachdenkens über Mimesis. Die Beiträge des Sammelbandes stellen diese impulsgebenden Wirkungen teilweise aus historiographischer Perspektive dar, indem sie an historische Auslegungen, Modifi kationen und Transformationen der Aristotelischen Mimesis-Konzeption erinnern (so z. B. Andreas Kablitz: "Die Unvermeidlichkeit der Natur. Das aristotelische Konzept der Mimesis im Wandel der Zeiten," 189-211); teilweise stehen sie aber auch selbst im Zeichen des Versuchs, aristotelische Differenzierungen des Mimetischen für den eigenen Gegenstandsbereich fruchtbar zu machen und sich mithin in den Spuren des antiken Bezugstextes zu bewegen, beispielsweise Cornelia Müllers "Mimesis und Gestik" (149-187); Ausgangsthese der Sprachwissenschaftlerin ist, dass die Aristotelische Mimesislehre einen besonders geeigneten Bezugsrahmen für eine "Systematisierung der Grundlagen gestischer Mimesis" bildet, wie sie zu den Gegenständen aktueller sprachwissenschaftlich-kommunikationstheoretischer Forschung gehört (151). Deutlich wird bei der Lektüre der Abhandlungen allerdings auch, dass es nicht möglich ist, trennscharf zwischen einer 'historiographischen' und einer die aristotelischen Theoreme aufgreifenden und weiterführenden Haltung-gleichsam zwischen zwei verschiedenen Formen des mimetischen Verhaltens gegenüber Aristoteles-zu

Cultural Impact in the German Context, Nov 1, 2010

Forum for Modern Language Studies, 1999

... When Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Mary Stuart evokes her royal power with reference ... more ... When Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's Mary Stuart evokes her royal power with reference to the sceptre and the sword, familiar images of the power of the author's pen (which has also been equated with phallic power7) spring to mind. Marie and her character Maria might be ...

Die Kulturwissenschaftlerin Saidiya Hartman beschreibt die Lebenswege junger Schwarzer Frauen in ... more Die Kulturwissenschaftlerin Saidiya Hartman beschreibt die Lebenswege junger Schwarzer Frauen in den USA des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Waywardness ist ein Wort, das sich schwer übersetzen lässt: ich werde das deutsche Wort Eigensinn benutzen, obwohl auch Abwegigkeit dem Wörterbuch nach als synonym gilt, und als die Erforschung neuer Wege mitgedacht werden kann. Hartman konzipiert waywardness als eine Praxis des Möglichen (practice of possibility). Eigensinn ist das semantische Gegenüber von common sense, dem dominanten Gruppensinn, der oft in jedem Sinn gemein ist. Auch in der Literatur kann Eigensinn als beautiful experiment verstanden werden. Kunst, so Izabella Penier und Anna Suwalska-Kolecka, sei gewissermaßen an ihrem am Gruppensinn rüttelnden Eigensinn erkennbar: Künstler*innen würden gerade durch ihre Eigensinnigkeit neue Erkenntnisse auftun, die es Individuen und Gesellschaften ermöglichen, sich zu entwickeln und zu erweitern.

German Politics and Society, 2015

Anniversaries provide moments for taking stock. In the wake of the so-called Supergedenkjahr of 2... more Anniversaries provide moments for taking stock. In the wake of the so-called Supergedenkjahr of 2014—the year of numerous significant commemorative events for Germany, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and of German unification—it seems particularly timely to engage with debates about what it means to be German. Such retrospection is now an established and widespread part of the German habitus, and the number of organized moments of contemplation—moments that say as much about the present as the past—has multiplied since unification. Within Germany and beyond, the question of what it means to be German is frequently being asked by those who want to define local, national and international agendas for the future and to redefine agendas of the past. Representing an individual, a community or a nation involves the construction of narratives and identities, a process now often informed by sophisticated understandings of image and audience, of beliefs and branding. In fact, the numer...

German Life and Letters, 1997

This essay looks at texts by women dramatists from around the turn of the last century. One of th... more This essay looks at texts by women dramatists from around the turn of the last century. One of them, Elsa Bernstein-Porges, was well-known in her day and has to some extent survived in literary histories. The other two, Gertrud Prellwitz and Julie Ktihne, have remained almost entirely unknown. The ambiguity in the title is deliberate. I consider the effects of a masculinist literary discourse on women who wrote dramatraditionally the 'masculine' genreas well as the importance of the ideological position and experience of the reader in any assessment of literary 'value'. This leads me to try to analyse what it is that makes a text powerfula moving or exciting reading experienceand to consider the significance of this in the context of feminist literary criticism. When a text takes your breath away, that matters. It matters particularly if the writerlike two of the three turn-of-the-century dramatists I shall discusswas one of the many women who neither found recognition during their lifetimes, nor appear in literary histories today. Drama by women features less prominently than any other genre in the traditional canon. This no longer leads all critics to assume, as Bovenschen still did in 1979,' that real women did not write much drama; they clearly did.2 But at the turn of the last century plays by women were critically measured for the mainstream against a yardstick of 'masculinity'; and at the turn of this one, we can still hear critics on the radio discussing literature in terms of its positively connoted 'virility' (Radio 4, very recently). If we permit ourselves to assume that it is not masculinity or virility in themselves that put the power in the textat least, not for everyonewe still have to ask what does? To speak with Joanna Russ: This is a good [drama]. Good for what? Good for whom? ' Silvia Bovenschen, Die imaginierte Weiblichheit: Exnnphksche Lintersuehungen LU kulturgeschichtlichen und literaiischen Priienlatirmsfmnm &s Weiblicha, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, p.217. This does not constitute a serious criticism of Bovenschen's germinal work. * A spate of recent studies illustrates this, e.g.:

German Studies Review

Ayim is seldom read for her gift for making people laugh. Here I assess her use of humor and iron... more Ayim is seldom read for her gift for making people laugh. Here I assess her use of humor and irony in her poetry and performances. Following Audre Lorde's reasoning that poetry is not a luxury, I suggest that Ayim's aesthetics make racism visible and lay the foundations for epistemic change. In performing poetry that she deliberately made accessible, not least through humor, Ayim occupied discursive space, offering audiences and readers comic pleasure at the price of acknowledging the alternative knowledge her poetry produced. I therefore read her poetic humor as an act of aesthetic insurrection that both produces new knowledge and invites epistemic change.

Modern Language Review

Why is the pain of every day translated so constantly into our dreams, in the ever-repeated scene... more Why is the pain of every day translated so constantly into our dreams, in the ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story? 1 It is well established that for those who have been marginalized or traumatized, speaking out can be psychologically hindered. 2 It can also be physically hindered: Larry Siems, who edited Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantánamo Diary, has observed that 'the strictest censorship in the world governs the speech of Guantánamo prisoners'. 3 But even when it is possible, speaking out is not the same as being heard. I want to borrow Primo Levi's characteristically limpid articulation of a narrative problem-the 'unlistened-to story'-to explore the problem of stories that are told, but not heard. Prison experience is not the same in all places, times, and political situtations. Levi's profound understanding of the problems of speaking out illuminates the problem of telling the story of incarceration; but that is not to say that prisons are the same as concentration

I begin with a poem of Koepsell's that questions the writing of poetry in times of political ... more I begin with a poem of Koepsell's that questions the writing of poetry in times of political upheaval, and whether words can save necks. I then examine the collection Die Akte James Knopf for possible answers to those questions. José Medina conceptualises epistemic death, and Koepsell reveals the closeness of epistemic and actual death. I read Die Akte James Knopf as both a poetry collection and a dossier of evidence in a case of epistemic murder; it uncovers the mechanisms of racialised knowledge production/perpetuation, and produces what David Lloyd has called poetic justice. Medina writes of guerilla pluralism, which in this context I call provoking pluralism, because it privileges linguistic intervention over violence. In its grammar and effects, provoking pluralism is both irritating and potentially generative. I also conceive of guerilla epistemology, which operates a reversal, or revolution, of epistemic privilege. Koepsell provokingly acknowledges that the violence of ep...

Daphnis

This article acknowledges racism and sexism as ethical problems in Grimmelshausen’s novel Courasc... more This article acknowledges racism and sexism as ethical problems in Grimmelshausen’s novel Courasche. Its charismatic protagonist is not only old and a woman (and therefore arguably a witch), but adds racialised exclusion to her portfolio when she narrates her autobiography in blackface. Here the author interrogates Grimmelshausen’s narratorial masks using Medina’s conception of the infelicitous subject, who has a paradoxical double function: infelicitous subjects simultaneously demonstrate how things should not be done and sow seeds of doubt about the practices and beliefs of the normative economy. Recognising the problem racism and sexism represent in Courasche raises the question whether Grimmelshausen’s engagement with knowledge is conventional or innovative; whether Courasche merely reproduces, or also destabilises, epistemic injustice. Courasche as a protagonist is an exemplar of transgression. But is her transgressive infelicity epistemically constitutive – does it contribute ...

Prison Writing and the Literary World

German Life and Letters, 2020

Otoo has called the artistic production of Black and of Colour writers in contemporary Germany &#... more Otoo has called the artistic production of Black and of Colour writers in contemporary Germany 'eine Praxis des Widerstands'. Here I read her Bachmann-prizewinning story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin through the lens of Jamika Avalon's conception of a fugitive archetype of resistance which is, I argue, simultaneously a working definition of a literary work of art. I also read the story as a literary investigation of the phenomenon Miranda Fricker has called epistemic injustice ('a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower'). Fricker's articulation of epistemic injustice has helped spark an 'epistemic turn' across disciplines. I refer particularly to José Medina's development of her work in his Epistemology of Resistance (2013). Subaltern subjects, argues Medina, can gain an epistemic advantage because they have to work harder cognitively, maintaining 'two cognitive perspectives simultaneously'. Theorists of epistemic injustice strikingly often rely for their arguments on literary fiction, which has long been alerting its readers to epistemic injustice and its painful or lethal consequences. Otoo, I argue, uses storytelling and humour to offer both the epistemically privileged Gröttrups and her epistemically privileged readers opportunities to understand and transcend their cognitive limitations.