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Research Interests

The overarching trajectory of our research is the discourse on the Ästhetik der Ohnmacht

, the Poetik des Leibes and the construction/discussion of "syncopic subjectivity" as a post-deconstructive approach to literary and cultural aesthetics, which is focused on the fundamentals of the human condition.

a) Dionysian Poetology: Hölderlin

Focussing on Hölderlin’s writings the study investigates the philosophical and literary renaissance of the Dionysos-mythology around the year 1800. Transcending the boundaries of classicist aesthetics and idealist philosophy Hölderlin, alongside with other authors such as Heinse, develops his own Dionysian poetology, which has an impact on (post-)modernist literary discourses up until today. Main book publication:

(Review: Eckard Wolz in: Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger 50/4 (1997), 352-355)

b) Studien zu einer Ästhetik der Ohnmacht / Studies in the Aesthetics of Non-Power

This project is composed of a series of literary and philosophical case studies which examine cultural representations of the conditio humana through artistic (literary, performative) practice. They attempt to analyse the problematic interplay of traumatic experience and poetic initiative through a theory of syncopal or recessive subjectivity which overcomes the poststructuralist and de-constructivist notion of a disintegrating human subject. Main book publication:

(Reviews: Sabine Wilke in: The German Quarterly 77/4 (2004), 515-516; Gisela Dischner in: Aufgang. Jahrbuch für Denken, Dichten, Musik 3 (2006), 411-414.)

c) Figures of Law. Studies in the Interference of Law and Literature

International conference (UCC 2005) and anthology with essay contributions of Law and Arts scholars from USA, Ireland and Germany. The project investigates the representation of fundamental questions of Law in literary and other media approaches and explores the genuinely literary and aesthetic qualities of Law. “The main objective of this book is to search for such figures of law in literature and media representation, which represent human weakness and futility on one hand, but mirror on the other hand certain aesthetic and rhetoric qualities of the law phenomenon; these figures of law often appear to have fallen outside the Law’s conventional reach, while at the same time in a defiant way appealing to it. The “law of the Law” (Derrida), it seems, has an essentially poetic quality. Figures of Law seeks to open the literary discourse on the human condition of law. It investigates literary ways to mirror and articulate the question of law split between sovereign power and human futility, between violence, force, and trauma.” Main publication:

Review: http://www.iaslonline.de/index.php?vorgang_id=2819

d) Poetics after the Holocaust. Crisis and Creativity

International Conference at the Queen’s University Belfast, organised in co-operation with Marko Pajevic, QUB, in June 2008. Book publication with Camden House Publishers in 2011: Crisis, as a period of crucial transition, also opens the field of established perceptions for motions of change and creativity. Adorno’s famous dictum that to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric, as much as it has haunted poetical discourse, has also given rise to a variety of endeavours seeking to transform its seeming sense of negativism into artistic and literary acts of resistance. Entirely new beginnings seemed necessary to those who considered the humanist tradition to have lost all credibility, yet nevertheless wanted to address the growing sense of artistic innocence lost. Such challenges have ranged from Adorno’s own dialectical theory of literary commitment and aesthetic avant-garde to more recent propositions describing certain kinds of literature as acts of testimony (Levinas et al.) and processes of survival (Agamben). Embedded in the theoretical discourse triggered by Adorno and others focal points are the oeuvres of Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and Ingeborg Bachmann, their frictions and mutual contradictions with regards to the meaning of poetical traditions. A second historical stage of the post-war literary discourse is marked by the writings of Heiner Műller, emphasising the significance of figures of discontinuity. Further German authors who are being discussed are Nelly Sachs, Charlotte Beradt, Rose Ausländer, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Thomas Kling, and Uwe Timm. The final section of the volume is committed to comparative explorations, dealing with European authors of particular importance such as Jean Paul Sartre, André Malraux, and Danilo Kiš. Among the contributors are Rüdiger Görner (London), Gisela Dischner (Hannover), Chris Bezzel (Hannover), and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (National University of Ireland, Galway)

e) Literature and Cultural Anthropology

In the wider context of Literature and Anthropology, based on a seminar at the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Conference in Long Beach, CA, 2008, I have edited, in co-operation with Snježana Zorić (University of Zadar, Head of Cultural Anthropology), a volume on Topodynamics of Arrival. Essays on Self and Pilgrimage. The book has been published with Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. Description of content: “Travelling is the art of motion, motion results in moments of human encountering, and such moments manifest themselves in unsettling linguistic repercussions and crises of meaning. Places of arrival also function as inscriptions of such meaningful repercussions, inscriptions of the past crossing the present, of the other crossing the self. The articles in this book explore places, rituals, texts and scriptures as religious or secular inscriptions – “topographies” – of such “arrivals.” Each arrival happens, and its very place manifests itself only as momentous component of the process itself. Arrival is an event of conclusion as well as of up-rise and urgency for subsequent explorations of challenging new meanings to be read from the topography of the place, which mirrors thus a signifying dynamic for the metamorphosis of the traveler’s self: “topodynamic” of arrival.”

Current projects and projects planned for the near future are:

f) Poetics/Cultural Aesthetics of the Body.

In the latter half of the 20th century, a range of new literary approaches develops: approaches to the deconstruction of the Subject, the death of the Author, the end of Literature. This “complex” – in both senses of the word – is not restricted to literature and its theory but rather indicative of a far broader cultural and social problem, one affecting mentalities and their histories. The “Poetics/Cultural Aesthetics of the Body” is a theoretical approach to working through this complex in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, laying ground for the discourse on a cross-disciplinary - literary, visual, performative - Cultural Aesthetics of the Body. A debate about new definitions and delimitations of the subject, alternative concepts of authorship and an extended theory of literature and art that called into question earlier certainties and traditions has been set in train. The boundaries of the person are redrawn; fundamental aspects of its conditio humana become visible, aspects which had hitherto been concealed beneath reflection – either because no language had as yet been found for them or because they had simply not become visible in the conflict of discourses. The central question: “What aesthetic configuration of human subjectivity is possible in the space between annihilation and self-assertion?” requires a ‘cultural aesthetics of the body’ that has not yet been written. In response, we will examine the phenomenon of corporeality, defining it (within aesthetic parameters) as a ‘recessive’ form of subjectivity – that is, one that is still asserted in the process of its contestation; a form of subjectivity that critiques, relativises and supplements observations upon the disappearance of the subject.

g) Post-deconstructivist and Buddhist Aesthetics. The Formation of Inter-cultural Aesthetics

This project is originally connected with a Research Fellowship which I was awarded by the Japan Foundation for 2006 (I had to decline it, however, due to prior UCC obligations). I had been invited to the Postgraduate Institute of Osaka University by the Japanese philosopher Ryosuke Ohashi (Japan’s leading authority in the field of aesthetics). The aim is to explore the ‘aesthetics of non-power’ and the concept of syncopic subjectivity in the context of Japanese Zen-Buddhist traditions of aesthetic awareness and philosophical thought, especially the School of Kyoto and their concept of dis-symmetry – also to establish principles of an inter-cultural aesthetics discourse and re-ignite the debate about inter-cultural philosophy.

I have conceived this project as parallel and complementary to my study on the Poetik des Leibes, acknowledging Hölderlin’s unique position against the grain of his contemporary idealist, classicist and romanticist, discourse on aesthetics. I analyse the very late corporeal turn in his poetological thought. The book is entitled Apriorität des Individuellen. Hölderlins Antiidealismus. It will expand, and complete, my previous study on Hölderlin’s Dionysian poetology.

i) Aesthetics and Ethics in the Age of Digitally Networked Societies and Cultures

The project investigates the ethically and aesthetically formative principles of virtual realities in digitally networked societies. Based on an analysis of the critical rapport between social, fictional and virtual spheres of communication, the influence of digital media on the public discourse of aesthetic, ethical, and political norms will be explored.

Research Grants

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Books

	Year	Publication
	(2015)	Poetik des Leibes. Hofmann, Gert (2015) Poetik des Leibes. Bielefeld: Transcript. [Details]
	(2010)	Lektüren zu einer Ästhetik der Ohnmacht. Hofmann, Gert (2010) Lektüren zu einer Ästhetik der Ohnmacht. Rostock: Universität Rostock, Philosophische Fakultät, Habilitationsschrift. [Details]
	(2003)	Schweigende Tropen. Studien zu einer Ästhetik der Ohnmacht. Hofmann, Gert (2003) Schweigende Tropen. Studien zu einer Ästhetik der Ohnmacht. Tübingen, Basel: A. Francke Verlag. [Details]
	(1996)	Dionysos Archemythos. Hölderlins transzendentale Poiesis. Hofmann, Gert (1996) Dionysos Archemythos. Hölderlins transzendentale Poiesis. Tübingen, Basel: A. Francke Verlag. [Details]

Edited Books

	Year	Publication
	(2014)	Hofmann, Gert and Zoric, Snjezana (Ed.). (2014) Presence of the Body: Awareness In and Beyond Experience. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. [Details]
	(2012)	Hofmann, Gert and Zorić, Snježana (Ed.). (2012) Topodynamics of Arrival. Essays on Self and Pilgrimage. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. [Details]
	(2011)	Gert Hofmann, Rachel MagShamhráin, Marko Pajevic, Michael Shields (Ed.). (2011) German and European Poetics after the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity. Rochester NY: Camden House. [Details]
	(2008)	Hofmann, Gert (Ed.). (2008) Henry Staten, Eros in Trauer. Von Homer zu Lacan (ext. German translation from English original). Tübingen, Basel: Francke Verlag. [Details]
	(2007)	Hofmann, Gert (Ed.). (2007) Figures of Law. Studies in the Interference of Law and Literature. Tübingen, Basel: Francke Verlag. [DOI] [Details]
	(2005)	Hofmann, Gert; Studer Patrick; Stuhlmann, Andreas (Ed.). (2005) Language - Text - Bildung / Sprache - Text - Bildung. Essays in Honour of Beate Dreike. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. [Details]
	(2001)	Hofmann, Gert; Kilian, Esther (Ed.). (2001) Alles ist nicht es selbst Das kairotische Gedächtnis der Dichtung. Aachen: Shaker. [Details]

Book Chapters

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Honours and Awards

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Teaching Interests

German and Comparative Literature, literary and cultural theory, border areas of literature and philosophy, law, visual and performance arts.

Modules Taught