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Papers by Isak Winkel Holm

Introduction Part 1: Philosophical Investigations Chapter 1: I Don't Want to Know that I Know... more Introduction Part 1: Philosophical Investigations Chapter 1: I Don't Want to Know that I Know: The Inversion of Socratic Ignorance in the Knowledge of the Dogs Chapter 2: Kafka's Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The Trial Chapter 3: A Kafkan Sublime: Dark Poetics on the Kantian Philosophy Chapter 4: The Everyday's Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and Wittgenstein Chapter 5: You're nobody 'til somebody loves you: Communication and the Social Destruction of Subjectivity in Kafka's Metamorphosis Chapter 6: Kafka's Insomnia Part 2: Philosophical Topics Chapter 7: Animal Bachelors and Animal Brides: Fabulous Metamorphosis in Kafka and Garnett Chapter 8: Kafka's Political Animals Chapter 9: The Calamity of the Rightless: Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka on Monsters and Members Chapter 10: Knowing Life Before the Law: Kafka, Kelsen, Derrida Part 3: Philosophical Readings Chapter 11: Anxiety and Attention: Benjamin and Others Chapter 12: On the Mimesis of Reification: Adorno's Critical Theoretical Interpretation of Kafka Chapter 13: "In the Penal Colony" in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze Chapter 14: In a Messianic Gesture: Agamben's Kafka Index About the Contributors

K&K - Kultur og Klasse, 2003

Slagmark, 2005

Det billede, som tegnes af Søren Kierkegaard i Theodor W. Adornos forfatterskab, er i overvejende... more Det billede, som tegnes af Søren Kierkegaard i Theodor W. Adornos forfatterskab, er i overvejende grad et fjendebillede. I aforismen 'Guldprøve' fra Minima Moralia beskrives Kierkegaards filosofi som en brutal filosofi: 'Hele inderlighedens filosofi er med sit krav om verdensforagt den sidste sublimering af den barbariske brutalitet, at den, der var der først, har fortrinsret' (Adorno 1973, 262). I den tyve år tidligere habilitationsafhandling-Kierkegaard. Konstruktion af det aestetiske, der udkom samme dag som Hitlers magtovertagelse i 1933-finder den meget unge Adorno den samme barbariske brutalitet i Kierkegaards måde at filosofere på. Kierkegaards filosofiske ånd opfører sig som en skabergud-den har 'usurperet oprindelsens magt' og 'introniserer sig som skaber' (Adorno 1996, 104 og 180)-og i denne guddommelige selvherlighed bilder den sig ind at den var der først og derfor er oprindelse til al mening i verden. Dette problem ytrer sig ikke mindst i forholdet mellem filosofi og fantasi, mellem begreb og billede. For Adorno er Kierkegaards brutale ånd en billedfjendsk, monologisk ånd der afviser anskuelsen af tingene som fristelse (Adorno 1996, 65). Ser man naermere efter, opfatter Adorno imidlertid ikke bare Kierkegaard som fjendebillede, men også som forbillede. I Kierkegaards forfatterskab finder Adorno ganske vist en monologisk ratio, der brutalt underlaegger sig resten af verden. Men han finder også noget man kunne kalde en ikke-brutal fornuft, dvs. en form for taenkning der bevaeger sig fremad i dialogisk vekselvirkning med fantasiens og anskuelighedens heteronome materiale. Og denne billedbrugende filosofiske fremgangsmåde bliver vel at maerke en vigtig inspiration for Adornos egen filosofiske stil. Det er dog en filosofisk stil, som endnu ikke har fundet sig selv i debutbogen. Betragtet som akademisk håndvaerk er Kierkegaard-bogen en katastrofe.

Discursive Framings of Human Rights, 2016

Drawing the line Zombies and citizens in Heinrich von Kleist's 'The Earthquake in Chile' lsak Win... more Drawing the line Zombies and citizens in Heinrich von Kleist's 'The Earthquake in Chile' lsak Winkel Holm 'Behavioural note-an infected male exposed himself to sunlight today. Now it's possible decreased function or growing scarcity of food is causing them to ... ignore their basic survival instincts. Social de-evolution appears complete. Typical human behaviour is now entirely absent'. In Francis Lawrence's 2007 movie I Am Legend, Robert Neville, played by Will Smith, passes judgement on a so-called 'Darkseeker' whom he observed earlier the same day. Darkseekers are speechless mutants, vulnerable to daylight, an athletic variety of zombie created by a cancer cure gone awry. Three years after its introduction, a genetically re-engineered measles virus has wiped out 90 per cent of the human race, and turned the rest into Darkseekers. The virologist Neville seems to be the last uninfected human being on earth, an updated, biopolitical omega man surviving in a deserted New York City where grass has begun to sprout in the streets. Neville's behavioural note draws a line between humans and non-humans, between members and non-members of the community of the 'human race'. Since social de-evolution now appears complete, and typical human behaviour is now entirely absent, the humans infected by the fatal measles virus may no longer be judged human. Based on this judgement, Neville hunts• down the Darkseekers, in order to use them as test animals in his basement laboratory, before killing them with impunity.

On Occasion of the Public Defence of the Dissertation: Thought in Image: Soren Kierkegaards Poetics

K&K - Kultur og Klasse, 2016

The article discusses the usefulness of the concept of critique for the understanding of the rela... more The article discusses the usefulness of the concept of critique for the understanding of the relation between literature and politics. Exploring two recent books about the political dimension of Franz Kafka’s literary works – Vivian Liska’s When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (2009) and Michael Löwy’s Franz Kafka: rêveur insoumis (2004) – the article distinguishes between two different understandings of critique: critique of ideology and post-structuralist critique. In Liska’s and Löwy’s interpretations of Kafka, these two standard understandings of critique are unable to grasp the critical potential of Kafka’s literary works in general and of Kafka’s short story “Fellowship” from 1920 in particular. Instead, based on Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘dissensus’, the article puts forward a concept of critique based on the reader’s aesthetic experience of Kafka’s literary works.

Danish Literature as World Literature

K&K - Kultur og Klasse, Dec 10, 2001

Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 2012

:In Dostoevsky, the question of justice is not only posed as a legal or moral question but also, ... more :In Dostoevsky, the question of justice is not only posed as a legal or moral question but also, on a more fundamental level, as a question of a human being’s right to live, its raison d’être. This article will interpret the central notion of justice in Dostoevsky in the conceptual framework of the theory of recognition as it is put forward in Hegel’s early Jenaer Realphilosophie.

Passage - Tidsskrift for litteratur og kritik, 2011

Isak Winkel Holm: “Arendt and Kafka. The Right to Rights in Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’”Fra... more Isak Winkel Holm: “Arendt and Kafka. The Right to Rights in Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’”Franz Kafka experienced a legal and political vacuum opening up in the middle of civilized Europe, Hannah Arendt saw it culminating in the death camps. In this sinister historical situation both authors were not so much interested in the question of specific rights as in the more fundamental question of the right to have rights – to use Arendt’s famous formula. This essay explores the intricate relationship between Kafka’s and Arendt’s analyses of the “calamity of the rightless”. On the one hand, Kafka’s literary diagnosis of rightlessness will be reconstructed through a reading of his story “The Metamorphosis”; on the other hand, Arendt’s philosophical portrait of the rightless refugee will be developed in a discussion of her early Kafka essays and, first of all, of her Origins of Totalitarianism. The contention is that Arendt’s notion of the right to have rights and, hence, her reading of...