Figures of Natality

Joseph D. O’Neil is Associate Professor in German Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Kentucky, USA.

At the core of this project is the question of how political action is possible without relying on essentialism. We do not need to be reminded of current discussions to understand that this is a timely project. O’Neil offers a sophisticated account of the concepts behind these debates which delivers to the reader both a panoramic display of political theory and a careful consideration of literary texts … The study brings a number of discourses into relation (biology, selfhood, economic etc.), arguing that they all follow a shared model of autopoiesis (or its rupture) around 1800. Considering the metaphor of birth at the study’s center, it is not surprising that the author aims to establish a connection between models of life’s origin and the political … Ultimately, however, for O’Neil the question is not only what happens in literature, but what we gain when engaging with it. O’Neil’s work is driven by the desire to open spaces for contingency in action in a world that is increasingly defined by automatization and repetition. In opening these spaces, literature plays a prominent role “as that which breaks with… social and cognitive routines” (21) … O’Neil’s engagement with Arendt’s concept of natality proves an impressively productive venue for, as the title states, Reading the Political in the Age of Goethe. It is also a powerful reminder that the end of politics might not deliver the best of possible worlds.

• AcknowledgementsChapter 1: Lyric Births: Poetic Revolution and Maieutic TechniqueChapter 2: Genre, Generation, and the Retreat of the PoliticalChapter 3: Ghostly Births: The Specter of Romanticism and the Maieutics of the Medium Chapter 4: “Not as in a mirror”: Wilhelm Meister and the Haunting of SovereigntyChapter 5: Kleist’s Machiavellian Mothers: Institution, Relation, DistributionConclusion: Split Summits and Bifurcated Maieutics: The Political Difference and the Future of DemocracyBibliography