stop fighting!
Identitätspolitik Hadija Haruna-Oelker explores the possibilities for dialogue
The concept of identity politics, coined by Francis Fukuyama, has been causing one thing in particular for a number of years: controversy. Between supposed speaking bans on the one hand and political correctness on the other hand, there are at first sight seemingly insurmountable lines of conflict. Hadija Haruna-Oelker’s essay documents that instead of insisting on opposites, there is another way of exchanging views on the ongoing topic The Beauty of Difference. Think differently together. After the political scientist and economist has already dealt with racism and other patterns of discrimination in previous publications, the analysis is now followed by the proposal on willingness to learn. Based on the finding that we carry all the parts and perspectives of others within us, she pleads for listening, the recognition of difference, the willingness to empathize with the point of view of the other person and, last but not least, for an awareness of the beautiful and unique in the unknown able to recognize. Fortunately, the author, who was born in 1980, does not limit herself to purely rational arguments, but also repeatedly includes autobiographical points of view in her text. Abstract discourses are thus given a face, one that looks open-heartedly at the imponderable world.
The Beauty of Difference. Think differently together Hadija Haruna-Oelker btb 2022, 560 S., 24 €
Vitales Thinking
society “The Controversy over Plurality” – Juliane Rebentisch questions Hannah Arendt’s writings with virtuosity
Hannah Arendt was a pugnacious intellectual, and that pugnacity has a backing in her convictions. One would be doing Arendt’s legacy a real disservice if one were to accord her writings the authority of holy texts and thus remove them from the realm of lively debate” – without the multi-layered and at times tense work of the philosopher and cultural theorist Hannah Arendt, who was born in Hanover in 1906 To smooth things out, the author Juliane Rebentisch examines their writings for applicability to current discourses and social developments. In ten chapters, she deals with central issues of our time – from the state of democracy and capitalism to migration and identity to racism and colonialism. What connects the individual texts is the discussion about the appropriate handling of diversity. The Controversy over Plurality. Clashes with Hannah Arendt is therefore the title of her book, which is as stimulating as it is concentrated, and which not only offers instructions for vital thinking that balances out contradictions. Rather, it proves the urgency of dealing with intellectuals at a time when political utopias, which have been missing for too long, have been replaced by reactionism and pragmatism.
The Controversy over Plurality. Clashes with Hannah Arendt Juliane Rebentisch Suhrkamp 2022, 287 S., 28 €
The World Artist
art history Horst Bredekamp comprehensively reviews the life and work of the Renaissance genius Michelangelo
The art historian and professor Horst Bredekamp, who was born in 1947 and teaches at Berlin’s Humboldt University, is an authority. What he writes about the Renaissance or the new media carries weight. And so it is hardly surprising that his monumental approach to the life and work of the master and world artist Michelangelo is also convincing through its excellence. The winner of the Schiller Prize expertly describes and researches his iconic works, including the famous David and, of course, the paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
What characterizes Bredekamp’s approach is the successful attempt to place work and biography in a conditional context. According to him, both influence each other. The fact that the art connoisseur, who ended up as a guest in Princeton, Los Angeles and Budapest, also includes contemporary historical aspects in his investigation, gives his text breadth and depth at the same time. To nominate his study Michelangelo The jury therefore states: “Horst Bredekamp presents the life and work of Michelangelo comprehensively and at the same time with a love of detail. His richly illustrated monograph invites you to read it for culinary pleasures as well as to look it up, and it is already a standard work in art history.”
Michelangelo Horst Bredekamp Wagenbach 2021, 816 S., 89 €
Father’s ways
reconstruction “Everything we don’t remember”: Christiane Hoffmann discusses what remembering experiences of flight teaches us for the present
She is best known as a poignantly argumentative commentator on political events and recently as one of the well-known faces of Olaf Scholz’s team: Christiane Hoffmann, long-time editor of the F.A.Z., then leading member of the capital city office of the Spiegel and now deputy spokeswoman for the federal government. The fact that the former journalist can also be very personal is revealed by her approach to her father’s story. In “Everything we don’t remember. Walking my father’s escape routeShe describes a hike that follows the traces of his escape from Silesia in 1945. By asking how today’s families deal with the past of their displaced ancestors, the author resists the historicization of the migration complex. Her path leads into yesterday in order to better understand the here and now. Based on eyewitness reports, personal memories and descriptions of acquaintances on the trip, a dense book is created that interweaves individual experiences with the context of society as a whole. Furthermore, according to the jury, Hoffmann’s “moving reconstruction tells of the ambivalence and fault lines in the German-Polish-Russian relationship with overwhelming clarity”. Especially in the shadow of the Ukraine crisis, the text is therefore extremely explosive.
Everything we don’t remember. Walking my father’s escape route Christiane Hoffmann C. H. Beck 2022, 279 S., 22 €
principle of disruption
language Uljana Wolf ponders in “Etymological Gossip. Essays and Speeches” on the philosophy of translation
It is a journey into a head that is an embodied essay, a journey to a point where language can be reinvented and narrated – Uljana Wolf’s compilation of essays, prose and poetry, summarized under the title Etymological gossip. essays and speeches, strives above all to break out of traditional sign structures. Anyone who wants to reveal and ultimately question the pre-forming of language should, as the poet suggests, place particular trust in the principle of disruption – a thesis that, by the way, goes back to Judith Butler’s performative approach.
One of the main focuses of the author, who was born in Berlin in 1979, is translation. Ultimately, she ascribes an entire philosophy to him: “Wasn’t it the case that what was translated should make what was said in another language understandable? Why should one notice that it has been translated, why should the speech have anything translated or even incomprehensible attached to it? And how would something sound in translation?” Wolf’s book is not a study, not a textbook, but the document of a free spirit. Her writing is characterized by testing and experimentation, proving to be a poetic laboratory in which every word can take on numerous meanings.
Etymological gossip. essays and speeches Oil Wolf cooking books 2021, 232 S., 22 €