GER-G 825 SEMINAR IN GERMAN LITERATURE (3-4 CR.)
2 classes found
Fall 2024
Component | Credits | Class | Status | Time | Day | Facility | Instructor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SEM | 3 | 14066 | Open | 6:30 p.m.–8:45 p.m. | MW | BH 016 | Hass U |
Eight Week - First / In Person
SEM 14066: Total Seats: 15 / Available: 10 / Waitlisted: 0
Seminar (SEM)
- Above class meets first eight weeks only
- Above class meets with another section of GER-G 825
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Haß: The Chorus as an Ecological Figure The turn towards the concept of ecology is no longer limited to a specific academic field, but articulated and analyzed in very different contexts, where the need to envision new forms of sustainabilitiy is urgently felt. So we have thousands of ecologies today, encompassing the terms and concepts of environment, milieu, and Umwelt, allied with contemporary endeavors to understand something of the current threatening changes to our planet. The efforts are characterized by the present. Most approaches therefore focus on the transformations brought about by the becoming-environment of capitalism (platform capitalism, financial capital) or by the becoming-environment of technology (ubiquitous computing, connectivity), paired with a larger critique of anthropocentrism and its hierarchical distinction of human and nonhuman, subject and object and so on. In proposing here to examine the chorus as an ecological figure, it is not in the name of the past or history. Our focus is absolutely the present, except that this present becomes more expansive, as western cultures deal with occidental legacies of considerable age (which means that they are never stable). In the era of an early GO WEST movement, in which a few cultural areas of the Aegean started their becoming-Greek, the amalgam of Anthropos, man, Greek and protagonist (of the theater) emerges as the founding product of the Greek city. Alongside of this amalgam and as a migrant in the city is the chorus, which is not an invention of the theater, but rather comes from cults in the outside of the city. So the chorus does not owe itself to any foundation. It forms a place (topos) of pure plurality, of non-genealogical forms of connection and non-familial modes of relating. It is not based upon the species-trouble like the protagonist with its anthropogenic effects is. The chorus has nothing to do with an institution. It has no duration but is, on the contrary, a very fleeting, permanently decomposed and reassembling being. You could say that it is the becoming-environment of the Greek city, but because it is not a product of the city, that is only half of the story. The good thing about theater is that this rudimentary scheme of "being singular plural" (Jean-Luc Nancy), which appears in the relationship between protagonist and chorus, does not behave like history that can be read from historical data. This relationship is a permanently moving basic form that was and is active in different ways at all times and can therefore be studied using the most diverse materials, artefacts and arts -- especially today, when the idea of a protagonist is already completely exhausted. I propose: texts by Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, Hörl, Nancy, Schleef, Kirsch, etc.; studying the figure of the chorus with Wladimir and Estragon while they are waiting for Godot; the Walden-cabin of Thoreau and Le Cabanon of Le Corbusier; perhaps theater plays by Susanne Kennedy; and I am very open to further suggestions ...
Component | Credits | Class | Status | Time | Day | Facility | Instructor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SEM | 4 | 14067 | Open | 6:30 p.m.–8:45 p.m. | MW | BH 016 | Hass U |
Eight Week - First / In Person
SEM 14067: Total Seats: 15 / Available: 15 / Waitlisted: 0
Seminar (SEM)
- Above class meets first eight weeks only
- Above class requires permission of Department
- Above class meets with another section of GER-G 825
- Topic:
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Haß: The Chorus as an Ecological Figure The turn towards the concept of ecology is no longer limited to a specific academic field, but articulated and analyzed in very different contexts, where the need to envision new forms of sustainabilitiy is urgently felt. So we have thousands of ecologies today, encompassing the terms and concepts of environment, milieu, and Umwelt, allied with contemporary endeavors to understand something of the current threatening changes to our planet. The efforts are characterized by the present. Most approaches therefore focus on the transformations brought about by the becoming-environment of capitalism (platform capitalism, financial capital) or by the becoming-environment of technology (ubiquitous computing, connectivity), paired with a larger critique of anthropocentrism and its hierarchical distinction of human and nonhuman, subject and object and so on. In proposing here to examine the chorus as an ecological figure, it is not in the name of the past or history. Our focus is absolutely the present, except that this present becomes more expansive, as western cultures deal with occidental legacies of considerable age (which means that they are never stable). In the era of an early GO WEST movement, in which a few cultural areas of the Aegean started their becoming-Greek, the amalgam of Anthropos, man, Greek and protagonist (of the theater) emerges as the founding product of the Greek city. Alongside of this amalgam and as a migrant in the city is the chorus, which is not an invention of the theater, but rather comes from cults in the outside of the city. So the chorus does not owe itself to any foundation. It forms a place (topos) of pure plurality, of non-genealogical forms of connection and non-familial modes of relating. It is not based upon the species-trouble like the protagonist with its anthropogenic effects is. The chorus has nothing to do with an institution. It has no duration but is, on the contrary, a very fleeting, permanently decomposed and reassembling being. You could say that it is the becoming-environment of the Greek city, but because it is not a product of the city, that is only half of the story. The good thing about theater is that this rudimentary scheme of "being singular plural" (Jean-Luc Nancy), which appears in the relationship between protagonist and chorus, does not behave like history that can be read from historical data. This relationship is a permanently moving basic form that was and is active in different ways at all times and can therefore be studied using the most diverse materials, artefacts and arts -- especially today, when the idea of a protagonist is already completely exhausted. I propose: texts by Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, Hörl, Nancy, Schleef, Kirsch, etc.; studying the figure of the chorus with Wladimir and Estragon while they are waiting for Godot; the Walden-cabin of Thoreau and Le Cabanon of Le Corbusier; perhaps theater plays by Susanne Kennedy; and I am very open to further suggestions ...