Irving Wohlfarth

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Irving Wohlfarth (* 1940 in London ) is a German literary scholar and university professor.

biography

Irving Wohlfarth is the child of German-Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. He studied German , Romance studies and comparative literature at the Universities of Cambridge and Yale . His doctoral thesis from 1970 was entitled Aspects of Baudelaire's literary dandyism . Between 1964 and 1969 he studied philosophy at the University of Frankfurt , mainly with Adorno .

He then taught Romance studies, comparative literature and German studies at the universities of Johns Hopkins , Oregon , and Reims until 2006 . He has also been visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , the Collège international de philosophie and the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, the Universities of Antwerp , Bremen , Frankfurt and the Amherst College and Scholar at the Getty Institute in Los Angeles. Outside of Europe and the United States, he has attended conventions in China, Mexico, and Brazil.

Wohlfahrt lives in Paris and Bremen. Together with “his” philosopher, he appears in fictional disguise in Christa Wolf's novel “City of Angels”.

As a literary critic with a philosophical and psychoanalytical orientation and influenced by the Frankfurt School , he is mainly known for his work on Walter Benjamin , in particular the theological, political and literary dimensions of his thinking and its potential for a “prehistory” of the present.

He has also written about Choderlos de Laclos , Baudelaire , Lichtenberg , Nietzsche , Kafka , Scholem, Robert Antelme , Victor Klemperer , WG Sebald , Christa Wolf and Adorno .

Works

• Baudelaire and the power of loss of experience. Winter dead. In: Frankfurter Hefte . January 1968, 33-42
• Benjamin between the fronts. To the "destructive character". In: B. Lindner (Ed.): On the left everything still had to be unraveled…. (Benjamin in context). Syndikat, Frankfurt 1978, pp. 65-99.
• Dialectical whimsy. To determine the location of Adorno's aesthetics. In: B. Lindner, WM Lüdke (ed.): Materials for the aesthetic theory Th. W. Adornos. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1980, pp. 310-347.
• Crisis of narrative, crisis of narrative research. In: R. Klopfer, G. Janetzke-Dillner (Hrsg.): Narration and narrative research. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 269-288.
• "The loneliness that is ready to disappear". Walter Benjamin's correspondence with Gershom Scholem. Merkur, Munich 1981, pp. 170-191.
• "Always radical, never consistent ...". On Walter Benjamin's theological-political determination of the position. In: N. Bolz, R. Faber (Ed.): Antike und Moderne. To Walter Benjamin's “Passages”. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1986, pp. 116-137.
• Et cetera? The historian as a rag collector. In: N. Bolz, B. Witte (Ed.): Passages. Walter Benjamin's Prehistory of the Nineteenth Century. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1984, pp. 70-95.
• “Life doesn't live”. Adornos Pathos - using the example of the Minima Moralia. In: A. Honneth, A. Wellmer (Ed.): The Frankfurt School and its consequences. Berlin 1986, pp. 35-58.
• Jews and Germans. In: understanding for understanding. Festschrift for Dr. Heinrich Pfeiffer. Berlin 1987, pp. 191-197.
• "Fairy tales for dialecticians". Walter Benjamin and his hunchbacked man. In: K. Doderer (Ed.): Walter Benjamin and children's literature. Weinheim 1988, pp. 121-176.
• The arbitrariness of the signs. On a motive from Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language. In: C. Türcke (Ed.): Perspectives of Critical Theory. Festschrift for Hermann Schweppenhäuser . Lüneburg 1988, pp. 124-173.
• "The Inverted Tower of Babel". The idea of ​​Judaism in Walter Benjamin. In: Bucklicht men and history. Walter Benjamin theorist of modernity. Berlin 1990, pp. 102-104.
• "Secret Relationships". On the German-Jewish tension in Walter Benjamin. In: Studii Germanici XXVIII. Rome 1990, pp. 251-301.
• “Read what has never been written”. In: L. Verbeeck, B. Philipsen (ed.): The task of the reader. On the Ethics of Reading. Leuven 1992, pp. 15-62; reprinted in: U. Steiner (Ed.): Memoria. Walter Benjamin 1892–1940. Berlin 1992, pp. 297-344.
• "Close to the border between religion and nihilism". On the concept of tzimtzum in Gershom Scholem. In: G. Smith (Ed.): Gershom Scholem between the disciplines. Frankfurt 1995, pp. 176-256.
• The sorcerer's apprentice or: the unleashing of the productive forces. On a motif in Goethe, Marx and Benjamin. In: G. Raulet, U. Steiner (Ed.): Walter Benjamin. Aesthetics and philosophy of history. Bern 1998, pp. 165–198.
• Hear the unheard of. To the singing of the sirens. In: M. Gangl, G. Raulet (Hrsg.): Jenseits instrumenteller Vernunft. Critical Studies on the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Frankfurt 1998, pp. 225-274.
• In lingua veritas. Read LTI with and against Klemperer. In: Mittelweg April 36 / May 1999, pp. 73–90 (abridged version); Identités / Existences / Résistances, Réflexions autour des Journaux 1933–1945 de Victor Klemperer, Germanica 27/2000, Presses Universitaires de Lille. Pp. 103–146 (unabridged version)
• “A few heavy, massive weights?” On the “topicality” of Walter Benjamin. In: K. Garber, Ludger Rehm (ed.): Global Benjamin. Munich 1999, pp. 31-55.
• The medium of translation. In: C. Hart-Nibbrig (Ed.): Benjamin translate. Frankfurt 2001, pp. 126–177.
• Enlightenment from the moon. To Walter Benjamin's hearing model Lichtenberg. A cross section. In: Vittoria Borso (Ed.): Schriftgedächtnis. Writing cultures. Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, pp. 39–58.
• Nihilistic messianism. On Walter Benjamin's theological-political fragment. In: A. Noor, J. Wohlmuth (Ed.): "Jewish" and "Christian" language figurations in the 20th century. Paderborn 2002, pp. 141-214.
• A un passant. On the occasion of a Paris-Frankfurt passage and the missing work. In: Jacques Derrida: Fichus. Vienna 2003, pp. 43–82.
• “An almost infinite traffic”. On a motif by Franz Kafka. In: Harald Hillgartner, Thomas Küpper (Ed.): Media and Aesthetics. Festschrift for Burkhardt Lindner. Bielefeld 2003, pp. 119–148.
• Nihilism versus nihilism. Walter Benjamin's “world politics” from today's perspective. In: Bernd Witte, Mauro Ponzi (Ed.): Theology and Politics. Walter Benjamin and a paradigm of modernity. Berlin 2005, pp. 107-136.
• Left behind. To the updatability of the passage work. In: P. Rautmann, N. Schalz (ed.): Urgeschichte des 20. Jahrhundert. Continue writing on Walter Benjamin's Passages project. A symposium in Bremen. Hauschild, Bremen 2006, pp. 19–54.
• Starve, whistle, be silent. Kafka and the end of the art period. In: looking for traces, laying traces. Festschrift for Nicolas Schalz. Bremen 2006, pp. 293-344.
• The passage work. In: B. Lindner (Ed.): Benjamin-Handbuch. Stuttgart 2006, pp. 251-273.
• Fright. Walter Benjamin and the RAF. In: Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.): The RAF and left-wing terrorism. Volume 1, Hamburg 2006, pp. 280-314.
• Why has the passage work hardly been read so far? Conjecture over a business cycle. In: B. Witte (Ed.): Topographies of Memory. To Walter Benjamin's passages. Würzburg 2008, pp. 26-62.
• Camp, after-world, survival. Aporia as the basic figure of Adorno's aesthetics. In: G. Köhler, S. Müller-Doohm (ed.): Why Adorno? Göttingen 2008, pp. 155-198.
• with Nathalie Raoux: On Walter Benjamin's death. Legends, uncertainties, dialectical images. In: Naharaim 2. 2008, p. 1, pp. 106–157.
• Anachrony. Interference between Walter Benjamin and WG Sebald. In: International Archive for the Social History of German Literature. 2008, Volume 33, Issue 2, pp. 184–242.
• “Poetic Politics?” An attempt on a sentence by Walter Benjamin. In: Naharaim 5. 2011, pp. 150-225.
• Salvation versus apology. To Benjamin's dream kitsch. In: Neue Rundschau 123. 2012, Vol. 4, pp. 73–97.
• What remains. Christa Wolf's past future. In: Journal of Critical Theory . Lueneburg 2014.