Reproducing enlightenment: paradoxes in the life of the body politic : literature and philosophy around 1800 / Diana K. Reese.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reese, Diana K., 1965-

Series:

Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; 5.

Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human reproduction in literature.

Human reproduction--Philosophy.

Human reproduction.

German literature--18th century--History and criticism.

German literature.

German literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Philosophy, European--18th century.

Philosophy, European.

Philosophy, European--19th century.

Enlightenment--Europe.

Enlightenment.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (196 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Walter de Gruyter, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Written at the crossroads of aesthetics and politics, Reproducing Enlightenment: Paradoxes of the Body Politic interrogates the abstraction of the bearer of rights in Enlightenment thought by exploring contradictions between reproductive labor and political representation in the ideal of democratic citizenship. Drawing parallels between new definitions of biological form in Kant's Critique of Judgment and his popular writings on Enlightenment, Reese's study reveals connections between naturalist inquiry and the political category of self-evidence around the turn of the 19th century. Pursuing this connection into Weimar-Classical era aesthetics, Reese's scholarship sets the backdrop against which she proposes to read the formal literary innovations of Mary Shelley and Heinrich von Kleist. The careful comparison of textual compositions by Shelley and Kleist shows how these two authors refuse organicist metaphor and excavate the paradoxes of Enlightenment attempts to theorize the equality of a disembodied subject. Reproducing Enlightenment traces two anti-classical poetics that arc beyond the concept of juridical and biological self-evidence to touch the dialectics and dilemmas of recognition at the foundation of social being.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Another Reasoning Being

Chapter Two: Generating Universals

Chapter Three: Kleist's Penthesilea, Ein Trauerspiel

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612714429

9781282714427

1282714422

9783110217452

3110217457

OCLC:

642692737