Elliot Sturdy

“Prose Without Content? On the Contemporary Crisis of German Literature and Critical Thinking”

This study will examine the relation between the problems of form and expression in contemporary German prose and the problem of interpretation in critical thinking, seeing it as a potential way of defining a particular aspect of the contemporary consciousness. It will do so through a series of encounters with the work of authors such as Botho Strauss, Peter Handke, Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard.

The critical context for the approach for this study are the writings of Giorgio Agamben, in particular his diagnosis of the relationship between Aesthetics and Nihilism. Agamben’s work draws inspiration from philosophers such as Heidegger, Hegel and Walter Benjamin.

My own approach builds upon my earlier work on the Aesthetics of Hegel and Adorno and my wider research of critical thinkers such as Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe and Blanchot.

Bernhard Malkmus, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Michael Lewis, Department of Philosophy, Newcastle University

Elliot Sturdy, “The Coming-into-presence of Bavardage”, Portals: A Journal in Comparative Literature, Vol. 18 (2018), pp. 17-29.