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SUMMARY:'&quot\;Wir wissen\, was wir wissen&quot\;: Re-thinking the Metrop
 olitan Subject in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz.' - Robert Crai
 g\, Trinity Hall\, Cambridge
DTSTART:20140210T170000Z
DTEND:20140210T183000Z
UID:TALK50173@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Erica Wickerson
DESCRIPTION:Döblin’s narrator says that his story will be worth reading
  for those who\, like Franz Biberkopf\, ‘in einer Menschenhaut wohnen’
  and come to demand more from life than ‘das Butterbrot’.  What appare
 ntly ensues\, however\, as Adorno would contend in Dialektik der Aufkläru
 ng (1947)\, is the narrative of Biberkopf’s normalisation and re-integra
 tion into the metropolis\; and our suspicions of ideology are hardly dispe
 lled by Döblin’s strikingly metaphysical suggestion (1932) of a ‘Geda
 nkenposition’ underpinning each of his novels.\n\nThis paper argues\, ho
 wever\, that it is precisely Berlin Alexanderplatz’s suggestion of the m
 etaphysical which invites a reading – paradoxically – both affirmative
  and emancipatory for Döblin’s metropolitan subject.  Drawing upon Thom
 as Isermann (1989) and Bettina Hey’l (2002)\, I submit that its ‘monta
 ge’ structures enact a fruitful tension between the repeated promise of 
 an identifiable hermeneutic\, and this promise’s repeated collapse into 
 strangeness and alterity.  Such a figuration of ‘Aufbau’ and ‘Zerfal
 l’ (Döblin 1932) illuminates intriguing affinities with his philosophic
 al essays and\, more broadly\, with the tradition of Lebensphilosophie rec
 ently revisited by David Midgley (2013). It is in this light that we glimp
 se Berlin Alexanderplatz’s metaphysical residue: the inextinguishable pr
 omise of Biberkopf’s meaningful (because non-ideological) reconciliation
 \, as a radically re-thought subject\, with the Other of Berlin.
LOCATION:326 Raised Faculty Building
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