LECTURERS 'THINKING - RESISTING - READING THE POLITICAL'



Armen Avanessian (Berlin)

Armen Avanessian studied philosophy, politics and literature in Vienna, Paris and Bielefeld. Currently he is a Research Associate in the SFB 626 (“Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits”) at the Free University Berlin. Recent Book-Publications: Phänomenologie ironischen Geistes: Ethik, Poetik und Politik der Moderne. München: Fink, 2010. Avanessian, Armen, and Franck Hofmann, eds. Raum in den Künsten: Konstruktion – Bewegung – Politik. München: Fink, 2010. Avanessian, Armen, et al., eds. Form: Zwischen Wahrnehmungslehre und Kunsttheorie. Berlin: diaphanes, 2009. Avanessian, Armen, Winfried Menninghaus and Jan Völker, eds. Vita aesthetica: Szenarien ästhetischer Lebendigkeit. Berlin: diaphanes, 2009. In preparation: publication on present-tense fiction.


Friedrich Balke (Weimar)

Friedrich Balke is Professor for the History and Theory of Artifical Worlds at the Media Faculty, Bauhaus-University Weimar and spokesperson of the DFG-Graduate Center “Media of History – History of Media”. His areas of teaching and research focus on the cultural history of political sovereignty, governmentality and modern biopolitics, interrelations of media and forms of knowledge, aesthetic theory and French philosophy. He has held visiting professorships at Columbia University, in the Departement of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and at the University of Konstanz, in the Research Initiative “Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary”. Friedrich Balke’s books include Der Staat nach seinem Ende: Die Versuchung Carl Schmitts. Munich: Fink, 1996. Gilles Deleuze. Frankfurt: Campus, 1998. Figuren der Souveränität. Munich: Fink, 2007 and Friedrich Balke, Harun Maye, and Leander Scholz eds. Ästhetische Regime um 1800. Munich: Fink, 2008.


Bruno Bosteels (Ithaca)

Bruno Bosteels, Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University. Previously, he held positions as an assistant professor at Harvard University and at Columbia University. He is the author of Alain Badiou: Une trajectoire polémique. Paris: La Fabrique, 2009. Badiou and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011; and The Actuality of Communism. London: Verso, 2011. He is currently preparing two new books, Marx and Freud in Latin America. London: Verso, 2011; and After Borges: Literature and Antiphilosophy. He has translated Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject. London: Continuum, 2009. Further translations include Badiou's Can Politics Be Thought? followed by Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of State and What Is Antiphilosophy? Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Lacan (both for Duke University Press, upcoming) as well as Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy. London: Verso, 2011. He is the author of dozens of articles on modern Latin American literature and culture, and on contemporary European philosophy and political theory. He currently serves as general editor of diacritics.


Josef Früchtl (Amsterdam)

Josef Früchtl, born in 1954; studies of Philosophy, Theory of Literature and Sociology in Frankfurt/M. and Paris; 1985/86 PhD in Frankfurt/M.; 1987-1989 Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Pisa/Italy); 1990-1993 Research Fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt/M.; 1995 Habilitation in Frankfurt/M.; 1996 Associate Professor of Philosophy (focussed on Aesthetics and Theory of Culture) at the University of Münster (Germany); from 2002-2005 President of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Aesthetik; since 2003 co-editor of the Zeitschrift fuer Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft; 2005 Chair in Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam; since September 2007 Head of the Department of Philosophy. Monographs: Mimesis – Konstellation eines Zentralbegriffs bei Adorno. Würzburg: Königshausen + Neumann, 1986. Aesthetische Erfahrung und moralisches Urteil: Eine Rehabilitierung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996. Das unverschaemte Ich: Eine Heldengeschichte der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2004. (published in English as: The Impertinent Self: A Heroic History of Modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 2009.) Books edited: Calloni, Marina, and Josef Früchtl, eds. Geist gegen den Zeitgeist: Erinnern an Adorno. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991. Früchtl, Josef, and Jörg Zimmermann, eds. Aesthetik der Inszenierung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001. Franke, Ursula, and Josef Früchtl, eds. Kunst und Demokratie: Positionen zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Hamburg: Meiner, 2003. Früchtl, Josef, and Maria Moog-Grünewald, eds. Aesthetik in metaphysikkritischen Zeiten: 100 Jahre ‚Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft’. Hamburg: Meiner, 2007. Articles on aesthetics, ethics, theory of culture, cinema, Critical Theory and theory of modernity.


Andreas Hetzel (Darmstadt)

Andreas Hetzel is Assistant Professor for Philosophy at Darmstadt University; he also teaches Media Studies at Klagenfurt University. His research and publication focus on the philosophy of language, classical rhetorics, political, social and cultural philosophy. His most recent publication is Die Wirksamkeit der Rede: Zur Aktualität klassischer Rhetorik für die moderne Sprachphilosophie. Bielefeld: transcript, 2010.


Bojana Kunst (Hamburg/Ljubljana)

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, contemporary art theoretician and DAAD visiting professor for Performance Studies at Hamburg University. She was studying in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and currently works at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts. She began to work as a young researcher in 1996 at the Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy - Aesthetics. With the young researcher grant from the The Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia she completed in the year 1988 her Master Degree in Philosophy with the thesis The Problem of the Body in Theatre, Impossible Body. In the year 2002 she complited and defended her Ph. D. dissertation with the title Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art Between Organic and Technological, Aesthetics of the Body and the Art of Postmodernism. She has the Ph. D. from philosophy – aesthetics. Her primary research interests are the problem of the body in the contemporary performance, theatre and dance, gender studies, philosophy of the body, art and technology, art and science, theatre and dance studies, representation of contemporary identities. For a number of years she has been working as a dramaturg with different Slovenian directors and choreographers, writing for numerous international journals (Maska, Frakcija, TanzAktuell / Ballet International, Performance Research, etc.) and books, participating at conferences and festivals around Europe. She also participated as the guest lecturer in the Socrates / Erasmus seminar at the University of Antwerp in February 2002. In year 1999 she published a book The Impossible Body - Body and Machine: Theatre, Representation of the Body and Relation to the Artificial. Ljubljana: Založba Maska, 1999. From October 2002 to October 2003 she was the research fellow at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and from January 2003 she is the researcher at the University of Ljubljana - Department of Sociology. In year 2004 she published a book Dangerous Connections - Body, Philosophy and Relationship to the Artificial. Ljubljana: Založba Maska, 2004.


Isabell Lorey (Berlin/Vienna)

Isabell Lorey, political scientist, 2010 visiting professorship at the Humboldt University, Berlin (sommer term). 2009 visiting professorship for Gender Studies, Biopolitics and Postcolonial Studies at the Faculty for Social Science, and habilitation in political science at the Vienna University. 2001-2007 assistent professor for Gender & Postcolonial Studies at the University of the Arts Berlin. Her book on Roman struggles of order, the Plebeian, concepts of community and immunization entitled "Figuren des Immunen. Elemente einer politischen Theorie" will soon be published with diaphanes (Zurich, Berlin). Recent texts on the topic of immunization: “Die Immunität Jesu: Lépra und Lepra von der Bibel bis ins Mittelalter.“ Kritik des Okzidentalismus. Eds. Gabriele Dietze et al. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. „Weißsein und die Auffaltung des Immunen: Zur notwendigen Unterscheidung zwischen Norm und Normalisierung.“ Epistemologie und Differenz. Eds. Bettina Bock von Wülfingen, and Ute Frietsch. Bielefeld: transcript, 2010 (for a different version of the text see here). Her publications also include: "Prekarisierung als Verunsicherung und Entsetzen: Immunisierung, Normalisierung und neue Furcht erregende Subjektivierungsweisen.“ Prekarisierung zwischen Anomie und Normalisierung? Geschlechtertheoretische Bestimmungsversuch. Eds. Alexandra Manske, and Katharina Pühl. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2010. Other recent texts on the topic of precarization: „Becoming Common: Precarization as Political Constituting.” e-flux: Searching for the Post-Capitalist-Self. June-September 2010. Web. "Virtuosität zwischen Dienstbarkeit und Exodus: Postfordistische Öffentlichkeit, soziale Produktion und politisches Handeln" fkw. Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und Visuelle Kultur 49 (2010). Find more here.


Randy Martin (New York)

Randy Martin is professor and chair of the department of art and public policy at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University where he directs the graduate program in arts politics. He is author of Performance as Political Act: The Embodied Self. New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1990. Socialist Ensembles: Theater and State in Cuba and Nicaragua. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1994. Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. On Your Marx: Relinking Socialism and the Left. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2002. Financialization of Daily Life. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2002. An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.


Dieter Mersch (Potsdam)

Dieter Mersch studied mathematics and philosophy in Cologne and Bochum. From 1983 till 1994 he taught mathematical economics at the University of Cologne and worked for various public-service broadcasters. He earned a PhD degree from the Technische Universität Darmstadt with a thesis on semiotics, rationality and the criticism of rationality in Umberto Eco's works in 1992 and completed his habilitation thesis Materialität, Präsenz, Ereignis. Untersuchungen zu den Grenzen des Symbolischen in 2000. From 2001 to 2004 he was a guest lecturer for philosophy of art and aesthetics at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Since 2004 he has held a chair in media studies at the University of Potsdam. His research areas include media philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophical aesthetics, philosophy of art, semiotics, hermeneutics, structuralism, and philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary thought. Memberships: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Semiotik, Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Philosophie in Deutschland, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ästhetik, Gesellschaft für Musik und Ästhetik (Freiburg), Deutsch-Ungarische Gesellschaft für Philosophie, Deutscher Hochschulverband. Selected bibliography: Ereignis und Aura: Untersuchungen zu einer performativen Ästhetik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001. Was sich zeigt: Materialität, Präsenz, Ereignis. München: Fink, 2001. Zeichen über Zeichen. Dieter Mersch ed. München: dtv, 1998. Breuer, Ingeborg, Peter Leusch, and Dieter Mersch, eds. Welten im Kopf. Profile der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Hamburg: Rotbuch, 1996


Nikolaus Müller-Schöll (Hamburg)

Nikolaus Müller-Schöll has been Professor for Theatre Studies at Hamburg University since 2009. Previously, he studied German Literature (with a focus on theatre and media), Arts, Philosophy and Politics at Avignon, Hamburg and Baltimore, earning his M.A. at Johns Hopkins University. He received his PhD from Hans-Thies Lehmann at Frankfurt University for a treatise on Benjamin, Brecht and Heiner Müller, and his habilitation from Theatre Studies at Bochum University in January 2007. He also completed the Henri Nannen School of Journalism at Hamburg organized by publishers Gruner and Jahr and the newspaper Die Zeit in 1987/88. During and after his studies he worked as free dramaturge, academic journalist, translator and critic, and as a DAAD Lektor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Rue d'Ulm, from 1996 to 2000, followed by two years as the Academic Coordinator of the University of Frankfurt's Graduate College "Zeiterfahrung und ästhetische Wahrnehmung". He received a scholarship from the Maison de Science de l'Homme at Paris for a project in theatre studies at Université de Paris 10, Nanterre. From 2004 to 2009, he worked as Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies at Bochum University, and deputized for Heiner Goebbels as a Professor at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at Giessen University. His research focuses on theatre studies as a critical discipline; questions at the intersect of theatre, theory, literature and politics; theatre as 'event'; questions of alterity, gesture, fictionizing the political, theatre as work on evil, potentiality, representation 'after Auschwitz', theatre architecture as built ideology and many others, including a continuing interest in Benjamin, Brecht, Heiner Müller, Kleist and "the comical as a paradigm of experiencing modernity" from 1700 to the present. He was curator of several conferences and workshops and has published on all of the listed topics, including: Das Theater des 'konstruktiven Defaitismus’. Frankfurt a.M. and Basel, 2002. Gerstmeier, Joachim, and Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, eds. Politik der Vorstellung. Theater der Zeit: Berlin, 2006. Haß, Ulrike, and Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, eds. Schauplatz Ruhr 2007. Theater der Zeit: Berlin, 2007. Haß, Ulrike, and Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, eds. Was ist eine Universität? Schlaglichter auf eine ruinierte Institution. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. Goebbels, Heiner, and Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, eds. Heiner Müller sprechen. Theater der Zeit: Berlin, 2009.


Stephan Packard (München)

Stephan Packard teaches Comparative Literature at Munich University, where he received his PhD in 2004. Special research interests include the semiotic and the psychoanalytic study of traditional and new media, ties between literary studies and language philosophy, censorship and other types of textual control, as well as the theory of metaphor. Ongoing efforts are directed towards a semiotic description of emotional and affective aspects of literature, focusing on 18th century sentimentalism and sensibility. Stephan Packard is a member of the editing board for the journal Medienobservationen. Publications include: Anatomie des Comics: Psychoanalytische Medienanalyse. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006. Donat, Sebastian, Roger Lüdeke, Stephan Packard and Virginia Richter , eds. Poetische Gerechtigkeit. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf UP, 2010. Some recent essays: “Copyright und Superhelden: Über die Prägung populärer Mythologie durch textuelle Kontrolle.ˮ Verrechtlichungsprozesse von Literatur und Film in der Moderne. Ed. Claude Conter. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 109-126. “Eine Ästhetik der Überforderung: Imaginäre Lesbarkeit und Opazität in Schriftfilmen.ˮ Schriftfilme: Schrift als Bild in Bewegung. Eds. Bernd Scheffer and Christine Stenzer. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009. 167-181. “Material Genotext: Polytextuality as a Type of Digital Transtextuality.ˮ Beyond Binarisms – Crossings and Contaminations. Eds. Eduardo F. Coutinho and Pina Coco. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 2009. 393-401. “Whose Side Are You On? – Zur Allegorisierung von 9/11 in Marvels Civil War-Comics.ˮ 9/11 als kulturelle Zäsur. Repräsentatoinen des 11. September 2001 in kulturellen Diskursen, Literatur und visuellen Medien. Eds. Sascha Seiler et al. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. 317-336. “A Model of Textual Control: Misrepresenting Censorship. ˮ Literature and Censorship: Who is Afraid of the Truth in Literature? Ed. Marijan Dović. Ljubljana: n.p., 2008. 179-191.


Wim Peeters (Dortmund)

Wim Peeters is a literary scholar, currently working as postdoctoral researcher at the German Department of the TU Dortmund. He is the author of a dissertation on chatter (Recht auf Geschwätz: Geltung und Darstellung von Rede in der Moderne. Leiden: Leiden University, 2008.) Further publications on Robert Walser, the Sacrifice of Abraham, 9/11, ‘social exclusion’ in contemporary literature and film, politics of comment in mondern literature.


Juliane Rebentisch (Frankfurt on the Main)

Juliane Rebentisch teaches philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. She is a member of the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders." Her main research areas are aesthetics of contemporary art and theatre, problems and figures of cultural critique, theories of freedom and democracy. Book publications include: Ästhetik der Installation. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003. Christoph Menke, and Juliane Rebentisch, eds. Kunst - Fortschritt – Geschichte. Berlin: Kadmos, 2006. Christoph Menke, and Juliane Rebentisch, eds. Kreation und Depression: Freiheit im gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus. Berlin: Kadmos, 2010. In preparation: Die Kunst der Freiheit: Zur Dialektik demokratischer Existenz ; Gegenwartskunst zur Einführung.


Gabriel Rockhill (Philadelphia)

Gabriel Rockhill is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University (Philadelphia), Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie and Chercheur associé at the Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CNRS/EHESS). He is author of Logique de l’histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques. Paris: Editions Hermann, 2010., and is currently completing a manuscript for Les Editions du Sandre on the role of radical historicism in rethinking the relationship between art and politics. He co-edited and contributed to: Gomez-Muller, Alfredo, and Gabriel Rockhill, eds. Critique et subversion dans la pensée contemporaine américaine: Dialogues. Paris: Editions du Félin, 2010. Rockhill, Gabriel, and Philip Watts, eds. Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Chardel, Pierre-Antoine, and Gabriel Rockhill, eds. Technologies de contrôle dans la mondialisation: Enjeux politiques, éthiques et esthétiques. Paris: Editions Kimé, 2009. He also edited and translated Jacques Rancière's The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum Books, 2004.


Frank Ruda (Berlin)

Frank Ruda holds a research position in philosophy at the Collaborative Research Center 626 at the Free University of Berlin. He is co-editor of the book-series “morale provisoire” based at the Merve Verlag (Berlin). Among other things he co-translated Badious “Peut-on penser la politique?” into German and is currently co-translating his “Théorie du sujet”. Selected Publications: Hegel’s Rabble. An Investigation of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right. London: Continuum (forthcoming). “Was ist das Reale des zeitgenössischen Realismus? [What is the Real of Contemporary Realism?].“ Realismus in den Künsten der Gegenwart. Ed. Martin Vohler. Berlin: diaphanes, 2010. 159-174. Ruda, Frank, and Jan Völker. “Verhältnislos. Zur Kompossibilität von Politik und Kunst [Without Relation. On the Compossibility of Politics and Art].” Inästhetik Nr.2. Eds. Tobias Huber, and Marcus Steinweg. Berlin: diaphanes, 2009. 113-120.