A respected marine biologist at the University of Jena, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was the most visible proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany around the turn of the twentieth century. Alongside his natural-scientific research activities, he attempted to popularise a philosophy that he dubbed ‘Monism’ – which consisted essentially of mid-nineteenth-century mechanistic materialism permeated with elements derived from early-nineteenth-century German Romantic pantheism – and to use this outlook as the basis for a worldwide anticlerical movement. His popular science books were an outstanding success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies throughout the world, but his organisation attracted far fewer adherents. By examining Haeckel’s popular science writings and contemporary reactions to them, especially among lesser-known contemporaries who have received relatively little attention in previous studies, this thesis explores the subjective appeal of Haeckel’s monistic philosophy. Specifically, it investigates the way in which he employed metaphors and visual images to communicate scientific and philosophical concepts, and in so doing seemed to provide his readers with what they had feared lost along with the decline of orthodox religious belief: a feeling of greater purpose, a foundation for ethical behaviour, an appreciation of beauty in the world, and a stable sense of identity. The imagery and metaphors that he employed were open to multiple interpretations, and others saw in them an expression of the destructive modern forces that threatened to bring about social collapse. Paradoxically, the same devices that accounted for Haeckel’s appeal as a popular science writer contributed to the incoherence and fragmentation of his Monism movement. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2008-01-31 15:39:57.866

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In this study I investigate the early work of the German writer Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) in relation to contemporary discourses of religious revival and secularization. Kracauer was one of the most renowned journalists of Weimar Germany. By the time he fled to Paris in 1933, he had written hundreds of articles for the Frankfurter Zeitung and other periodicals; he also had written sociological works and a novel. In this variegated collection of writing, Kracauer outlined a critique of mass culture that in some respects anticipated both the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the concerns of cultural studies in our own day. His subsequent work, written after his emigration to the United States in 1941, contributed to the early development of film studies, and it is for this work that he is primarily known. My dissertation explores the prehistory of Kracauer’s critique of mass culture, in particular, the origins of this critique in his writing prior to 1926. In this period, he closely observed and participated in contemporary philosophical debates on questions of religion and secularism. I argue that these issues occupy a position of fundamental importance in Kracauer’s idea of criticism. Between the collision and collusion of discourses concerning the religious and the profane, Kracauer defined a space for critical practice, a space that accepted a theologically influenced view of the secular age as an age of crisis. Even after Kracauer turned, later in his career, towards a more positive valuation of secular modernity, the modern remained for him a crisis-ridden state that required the mediating efforts of the critic. His critical practice, moreover, was informed by his attempt to secularize theological concepts, in terms of both substance and rhetorical strategy. Messianic and Gnostic traditions within Judaism influenced Kracauer, but his approach to this issue was ultimately eclectic, responding to a wide array of sources including the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. Though previous studies have pointed out that metaphysical impulses informed Kracauer’s work, an extensive analysis of his engagement with contemporary religious movements is still needed. This dissertation situates Kracauer within these movements and discusses how his criticism evolved in relation to the claims of these competing discourses. Using Kracauer as a case study, I argue that the confrontation between the religious and the profane was a common reference point for intellectual debate, and that this conflict was pervasive in the bitterly contested cultural politics of the Weimar Republic, preparing the ground for National Socialism.

In this study I investigate the early work of the German writer Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) in relation to contemporary discourses of religious revival and secularization. Kracauer was one of the most renowned journalists of Weimar Germany. By the time he fled to Paris in 1933, he had written hundreds of articles for the Frankfurter Zeitung and other periodicals; he also had written sociological works and a novel. In this variegated collection of writing, Kracauer outlined a critique of mass culture that in some respects anticipated both the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the concerns of cultural studies in our own day. His subsequent work, written after his emigration to the United States in 1941, contributed to the early development of film studies, and it is for this work that he is primarily known. My dissertation explores the prehistory of Kracauer’s critique of mass culture, in particular, the origins of this critique in his writing prior to 1926. In this period, he closely observed and participated in contemporary philosophical debates on questions of religion and secularism. I argue that these issues occupy a position of fundamental importance in Kracauer’s idea of criticism. Between the collision and collusion of discourses concerning the religious and the profane, Kracauer defined a space for critical practice, a space that accepted a theologically influenced view of the secular age as an age of crisis. Even after Kracauer turned, later in his career, towards a more positive valuation of secular modernity, the modern remained for him a crisis-ridden state that required the mediating efforts of the critic. His critical practice, moreover, was informed by his attempt to secularize theological concepts, in terms of both substance and rhetorical strategy. Messianic and Gnostic traditions within Judaism influenced Kracauer, but his approach to this issue was ultimately eclectic, responding to a wide array of sources including the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. Though previous studies have pointed out that metaphysical impulses informed Kracauer’s work, an extensive analysis of his engagement with contemporary religious movements is still needed. This dissertation situates Kracauer within these movements and discusses how his criticism evolved in relation to the claims of these competing discourses. Using Kracauer as a case study, I argue that the confrontation between the religious and the profane was a common reference point for intellectual debate, and that this conflict was pervasive in the bitterly contested cultural politics of the Weimar Republic, preparing the ground for National Socialism.

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Bibliography : pages 312-319. / The present study sets out to accomplish two things: first, to demonstrate that space and spatiality is the domain in which discourse partakes of the colonial project, and second, to isolate a number of textual strategies employed in the discursive production of colonial space. The first aim requires a lengthy theoretical discussion which occupies the first part of the study. Here I develop the thesis that spatiality as a philosophical preoccupation has never been divorced from the questions of sigmfication and subjectivity, and that the production of significant and subjective space is always a production of social space. In support of this thesis, it is shown that vision and writing are the two functions in which subjective space becomes meaningful, and that in both cases it becomes meaningful only as social space. It is thus in the context of looking and writing that the production of colonial space may be examined as a social space within which meaning and subjectivity are possible. The second aim requires an analytical study of a number of colorual texts, which I undertake in part II of the study. For simplicity, I have confined myself to the colonial discourse of German South West Africa in the period 1884-1915. The central thesis developed here is that discourse develops strategies for enclosing spaces by demarkating borders, privileging certain passages between spaces and blocking others. This organization of space is presented as the ordering of a chaotic multiplicity and, as such, as a process of civilization. The contradiction between the blocking and privileging of passages results in what I call a "ritual of crossing": an implicit set of rules prescribmg the conditions of possibility for crossing the borders it establishes. As a result, in its production of space, the colonial text assumes a mythical function which allows it to transcend the very spaces it produces. It is here that I attempt to situate colonial discourse's claims to uruversal truth. In conclusion, the detailed analysis of the production of space in colonial discourse may be understood as a strategic intervention. It attempts to use the texts of colonisation to counter colonization's claims to universal truth and a civilizing mission.

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