Dr. Edgar Landgraf
Faculty Improvement Leave for AY 2008-9
Link to Curriculum Vitae (Fall 2008)
e-mail
Research
My research focusses on well-known and well-established German literary, aesthetic and philosophical texts from the mid-eighteenth to the nineteenth century, addressing what within the field of German studies (and beyond) are familiar themes: artistic creativity, modern subjectivity, and changes in the semantics of individuality, of love, and of education (German Bildung). I investigate these themes in the context of the larger question of the emergence, structure, and semantics of modernity – modernity understood as the time period and the culture that has defined Western societies since the mid-eighteenth century. Within this broader thematic context, the body of my work gains contour through its methodological commitment. Drawing on contemporary systems theory and in particular on the works of the German socio-theorist Niklas Luhmann, my research engages what have traditionally been seen as philosophical problems and relates them to the kind of cultural analysis in which literary studies have always been interested. A secondary goal of my research then (second to the desire of making original contributions within the field of German studies and literary theory), is the ambition to introduce contemporary systems theory and its potential for the humanities to a wider audience. This is, I believe, a desideratum especially in the U.S. where systems theory’s reception, although increasing in recent years, still does not compare to the productive debate this methodology has stimulated in German academia.
Current ProjectsBook ProjectImprovisation, Art, and the Art of Living. Unpredictability and Creativity in the Age of Goethe (working title of book project). Book examines the aesthetic and literary engagement with improvisation during the age of Goethe in socio-cultural terms, namely as a reflection and critique of modernity. This means that my study is not restricted to improvisation defined as the simultaneity of performance and composition in art and their associated traditions in music and theater (esp. the commedia dell’ arte); rather, I will approach as it concerns unplanned, unprepared, and unforeseen (the literal meaning of im-pro-visio) actions in art and in life. In this broader sense, we can recognize improvisation as a central topos of the period, which is of interest not only aesthetically, but also poetically, and with regard to quite specific social and even political concerns. To put it in broad terms: modern society structures the interaction between individuals (and individuals and things) in ways, which invite and ever more often require that individuals improvise. A quick comparison with pre-modern society can elicit this point. In pre-modern societies, rituals, traditions, rigidly defined behavioral patterns (e.g. courtly manners) defined much of the interaction between individuals. The temporal imagination emphasized continuity through repetition and the dominant cosmology insinuated a “pre-stabilized harmony” which made the idea of a free will—of actions not always already predetermined in an overarching eschatology—all but unthinkable (think of Leibniz’ considerable efforts in dealing with the paradox of a free will in a world defined by an almighty and supposedly all-knowing God). By the end of the eighteenth century, a very different cosmology, a very different way of understanding time and history, and very different ways of people interacting take hold. Modernity defines itself teleologically. By insisting on newness, originality, and progress in almost every walk of life, modern society structures the expectations and interactions between people differently, turning improvisation into a primary modus operandi. One might even argue that improvisation has become the precondition for any activities or encounters that endeavor to be productive, i.e. activities that want to achieve more than a repetition of the familiar and old. This is true not only with regard to the production of artworks, but even for a simple conversation between two people. As opposed to the highly stylized conversational patterns of pre-modern, aristocratic societies, in modern times, even the most common conversation with a familiar person demands that each participant—if they indeed desire to converse rather than to agitate, manipulate, or (e.g. pedagogically) coerce—be not transparent or predictable for the other person and for him- or herself. Today, a conversation deserving of this name can emerge only if the participants are willing to act (verbally) in an unpredicted, unprepared, and unforeseen manner. Improvisation, in this regard, must be understood as necessarily defining the social horizon of modernity—modernity understood as a social structure that defines itself through its open future and its ability to learn.
