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Papers by Samuel Heidepriem
Colloquia Germanica, 2023
This essay argues that Kant's constitutional thought provides a justification for written constit... more This essay argues that Kant's constitutional thought provides a justification for written constitutions and written law generally. The question of written law in turn offers clarity on signature aspects of Kant's political philosophy, from universalism to the program of perpetual peace� Critiques of Kant from various points on the political spectrum must ultimately engage his theory of writing and its relation to Enlightenment and political right� In addition, contemporary rightwing movements can be characterized in contradistinction to Kant's constitutional principles. This includes these movements' rejection of internationalism, pacifism, and the media conventions of Enlightenment print culture. Kant's combination of written law and rational constitutionalism thus provides both a contrastive diagnosis and systematic alternative to the ideology of the new right�
German Studies Review, 2020
to develop a concept of unwritten constitution that refers to the existential unity of a politica... more to develop a concept of unwritten constitution that refers to the existential unity of a political community, rather than a set of laws. The unwritten constitution rejects basic pillars of liberalism, including social pluralism and legal norms, in favor of the concrete power of the nation-state. Ideological elements of the contemporary Right, particularly antiimmigration politics and a tendency toward militarism, may be understood as a move from written toward unwritten law.
PSA: The Journal of the Pirandello Society of America, 2020
Talks by Samuel Heidepriem
Conference Paper presented at University of Michigan (Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Co... more Conference Paper presented at University of Michigan (Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Conference "LEFTovers," March 2015
Conference Paper presented at University of Minnesota (German) Graduate Student Conference "Trans... more Conference Paper presented at University of Minnesota (German) Graduate Student Conference "Transformations," April 2015
Conference paper presented at 2016 GSA. Panel series: "Goethe at Play"
Talk given for the "Tsinghua Salon" lunch series at Tsinghua University, December 21, 2017.
Book Reviews by Samuel Heidepriem
The German Quarterly, 2023
Numerous epochal shifts mark the years around 1830. The end of the Goethezeit, the transition fro... more Numerous epochal shifts mark the years around 1830. The end of the Goethezeit, the transition from Romanticism to realism, and the ascendance of the bourgeois world are among the changes that interest Patrick Fortmann in his recent study of love-as literary object, emotional state, social project, and mode of knowledge-during this lively and restless period of German cultural history. Fortmann skillfully balances precision, focusing on a bounded set of primary texts that appear over the span of a decade surrounding 1830, often in response to one another, with larger-scale discussion of the intellectual and social currents of the time. Specifically, Kristallisationen von Liebe centers on readings of literary texts by Heinrich Heine, representatives of the short-lived Junges Deutschland movement, and Georg Büchner, whose works amplify and challenge in significant ways contemporaneous discourses on human love, from the literary legacy of sentimentalism and Romanticism to the worldly religion of Saint-Simon. On the one hand, Fortmann provides a thorough period study of literary and cultural dynamics around 1830; at the same time, his choice of theme, human love, brings him into contact with major intellectual tendencies of the last 50 years, working backward from the emotional turn in the humanities to groundbreaking theories of love and sexuality introduced by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Niklas Luhmann in the 1970s and 1980s. As Fortmann points out, whether under the aegis of discourse analysis, systems theory, or affect theory, we are debating what it means to take love as an object of knowledge. Precisely this is at issue around 1830, when, to cite one of Fortmann's central arguments, the epistemology of love-and in a larger sense, the relation between knowledge and feeling-is inseparable from questions of literary representation. Form, genre, technique, and narrative all find new configurations in Heine, the authors of Junges Deutschland, and Büchner, whose explorations of love
Colloquia Germanica, 2023
This essay argues that Kant's constitutional thought provides a justification for written constit... more This essay argues that Kant's constitutional thought provides a justification for written constitutions and written law generally. The question of written law in turn offers clarity on signature aspects of Kant's political philosophy, from universalism to the program of perpetual peace� Critiques of Kant from various points on the political spectrum must ultimately engage his theory of writing and its relation to Enlightenment and political right� In addition, contemporary rightwing movements can be characterized in contradistinction to Kant's constitutional principles. This includes these movements' rejection of internationalism, pacifism, and the media conventions of Enlightenment print culture. Kant's combination of written law and rational constitutionalism thus provides both a contrastive diagnosis and systematic alternative to the ideology of the new right�
German Studies Review, 2020
to develop a concept of unwritten constitution that refers to the existential unity of a politica... more to develop a concept of unwritten constitution that refers to the existential unity of a political community, rather than a set of laws. The unwritten constitution rejects basic pillars of liberalism, including social pluralism and legal norms, in favor of the concrete power of the nation-state. Ideological elements of the contemporary Right, particularly antiimmigration politics and a tendency toward militarism, may be understood as a move from written toward unwritten law.
PSA: The Journal of the Pirandello Society of America, 2020
Conference Paper presented at University of Michigan (Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Co... more Conference Paper presented at University of Michigan (Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Conference "LEFTovers," March 2015
Conference Paper presented at University of Minnesota (German) Graduate Student Conference "Trans... more Conference Paper presented at University of Minnesota (German) Graduate Student Conference "Transformations," April 2015
Conference paper presented at 2016 GSA. Panel series: "Goethe at Play"
Talk given for the "Tsinghua Salon" lunch series at Tsinghua University, December 21, 2017.
The German Quarterly, 2023
Numerous epochal shifts mark the years around 1830. The end of the Goethezeit, the transition fro... more Numerous epochal shifts mark the years around 1830. The end of the Goethezeit, the transition from Romanticism to realism, and the ascendance of the bourgeois world are among the changes that interest Patrick Fortmann in his recent study of love-as literary object, emotional state, social project, and mode of knowledge-during this lively and restless period of German cultural history. Fortmann skillfully balances precision, focusing on a bounded set of primary texts that appear over the span of a decade surrounding 1830, often in response to one another, with larger-scale discussion of the intellectual and social currents of the time. Specifically, Kristallisationen von Liebe centers on readings of literary texts by Heinrich Heine, representatives of the short-lived Junges Deutschland movement, and Georg Büchner, whose works amplify and challenge in significant ways contemporaneous discourses on human love, from the literary legacy of sentimentalism and Romanticism to the worldly religion of Saint-Simon. On the one hand, Fortmann provides a thorough period study of literary and cultural dynamics around 1830; at the same time, his choice of theme, human love, brings him into contact with major intellectual tendencies of the last 50 years, working backward from the emotional turn in the humanities to groundbreaking theories of love and sexuality introduced by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Niklas Luhmann in the 1970s and 1980s. As Fortmann points out, whether under the aegis of discourse analysis, systems theory, or affect theory, we are debating what it means to take love as an object of knowledge. Precisely this is at issue around 1830, when, to cite one of Fortmann's central arguments, the epistemology of love-and in a larger sense, the relation between knowledge and feeling-is inseparable from questions of literary representation. Form, genre, technique, and narrative all find new configurations in Heine, the authors of Junges Deutschland, and Büchner, whose explorations of love