Biography
In my work, I study practices, genres, and institutions of literature from early modernity to the modern and contemporary. The underlying assumption is that, in such practices, genres, and institutions, literature – la chose littéraire – is not a given but undergoes changes historically and manifests in a plurality of forms culturally. In my earlier books the focus is on the European trajectory from traditional poetics and rhetoric (the practices of art) to aesthetics (the modern philosophy or theory of art and literature: Affekt und Ausdruck [Emotion and Expression], 1990, focuses on interpersonal communication in literature in the context of psychology, physiognomy, semiotics, and linguistics; The Game of Probability. From Pascal to Kleist, 2012 [first, German, version 2002], discusses representation in the moment when traditional verisimilitude was reframed by the “probabilistic revolution”). In my studies on the novel from the 18th century to the present, the novel becomes the focus as the modern genre that allows and requires ‘theory’ (in particular, by developing a ‘novel of institution’ as the supplement of the ‘Bildungsroman’).
My present work explores the practices, genres, and institutions of literature in broader, theoretical, ways. Writing Scenes is a framework for exploring cultural production in the intersections of bodily practices, techniques and technology with meaning. By distinguishing a contract model of communication – the modern European standard model – with representational models of the one speaking with/for another before others I study the legal and political implications of literary forms.