Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2006

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Geisteswissenschaftliche Fakultät--Wien--Universität, 1993.

Thesis (M.A.)--McGill University, 1999. / Written for the Dept. of German Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

Este trabalho se propõe analisar as memórias contidas no livro comemorativo Vanguarda Pedagógica: o legado do Ginásio Israelita Brasileiro Scholem Aleichem (2008) organizado a partir da iniciativa do Grupo Memória Scholem composto por ex-alunos dessa instituição durante a década de 1970. Temos como objetivo central entender as estratégias de seleção e os sentidos da comemoração da memória dessa escola judaica contida nos arquivos e no livro da instituição. Também inserimos o livro no conjunto de comemorações das escolas renovadas da década de 1960, tendo em vista que existiram outras instituições coetâneas que reclamam para si o estatuto de Vanguarda Pedagógica mobilizado por esses grupos para comemorar a renovação pedagógica na atualidade. Desta forma, podemos entender como um objeto comemorativo produzido por ex-participantes de experiências da chamada renovação pedagógica pode propiciar um debate nas relações entre memória e a história da educação. / The aim of this dissertation is to investigate and analyze the memories contained in the commemorative book Vanguarda Pedagógica: o legado do Ginásio Israelita Brasileiro Scholem Aleichem (Pedagogical vanguard: the legacy of the Brazilian-Israeli Scholem Aleichem High School, 2008), organized by Scholem Memory Group (this group consists of former students who have studied in Scholem in the 1970s). The main objective of this study is to understand the strategies of choice of historical documents and testimonies about Scholem, as well as the intention of this celebration. The book is also included in the set of celebrations of renovated schools (so-called schools which, in the 60s, proclaimed himself the status of pedagogical vanguard). Such celebrations were mobilized by these groups to commemorate the pedagogical renewal nowadays. Thus, we can understand how a commemorative event produced by former participants of the pedagogical renewal experience and the processes by which meanings are attached to the past can provide a debate on relations between memory and the history of education.

Este trabalho se propõe analisar as memórias contidas no livro comemorativo Vanguarda Pedagógica: o legado do Ginásio Israelita Brasileiro Scholem Aleichem (2008) organizado a partir da iniciativa do Grupo Memória Scholem composto por ex-alunos dessa instituição durante a década de 1970. Temos como objetivo central entender as estratégias de seleção e os sentidos da comemoração da memória dessa escola judaica contida nos arquivos e no livro da instituição. Também inserimos o livro no conjunto de comemorações das escolas renovadas da década de 1960, tendo em vista que existiram outras instituições coetâneas que reclamam para si o estatuto de Vanguarda Pedagógica mobilizado por esses grupos para comemorar a renovação pedagógica na atualidade. Desta forma, podemos entender como um objeto comemorativo produzido por ex-participantes de experiências da chamada renovação pedagógica pode propiciar um debate nas relações entre memória e a história da educação. / The aim of this dissertation is to investigate and analyze the memories contained in the commemorative book Vanguarda Pedagógica: o legado do Ginásio Israelita Brasileiro Scholem Aleichem (Pedagogical vanguard: the legacy of the Brazilian-Israeli Scholem Aleichem High School, 2008), organized by Scholem Memory Group (this group consists of former students who have studied in Scholem in the 1970s). The main objective of this study is to understand the strategies of choice of historical documents and testimonies about Scholem, as well as the intention of this celebration. The book is also included in the set of celebrations of renovated schools (so-called schools which, in the 60s, proclaimed himself the status of pedagogical vanguard). Such celebrations were mobilized by these groups to commemorate the pedagogical renewal nowadays. Thus, we can understand how a commemorative event produced by former participants of the pedagogical renewal experience and the processes by which meanings are attached to the past can provide a debate on relations between memory and the history of education.

This thesis analyses the fabled public exchange of letters that occurred between political theorist Hannah Arendt and historian of Jewish religion Gershom Scholem in 1964 following the historic trial of Adolf Eichmann and Arendt's subsequent publication of her report of the event, Eichmann in Jerusalem. The thesis covers the historical issues that form the contextual background to the exchange. It involves the introduction of the two participants as defining Jewish intellectuals of the past century, the course of the trial itself and the political and ideological problems it entailed as well as the turbulent history of the reception of Arendt's book. It is down to these four factors that guaranteed the eminence of the exchange of letters analysed in the thesis. Oft-quoted as the exchange is, there has been no proper analysis of it to this date. To accomplish this task, the thesis adopts the theoretical-methodological framework of discourse analysis in general, and the version of rhetorically oriented discursive psychology, proposed mainly in the publications of Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Billig (1996), in particular. This approach allows the thesis to provide a fine-grained analysis of the various ways of textual construction. Firstly, the ways examined concern the significance, worth and value of the debate itself, as formulated by both of the participants. Secondly, they involve the construction of the attempt to establish definite versions of the content of the book. Thirdly, they cover the textual acts of accounting for that content, or the practice of misinterpretation of that content, respectively. What all these three aspects have in common is the positioning of the problems touched upon in a moral and political context, and ultimately approaching them in terms of the identities of the participants. In this sense, versions of the events and ways of accounting for it will not only aim at producing accurate descriptions of events but in the forms of an implied morality or politics an implied "action-plan" for the future as well. The construction of Arendt and Scholem is, hence, analysed in terms of its argumentative organisation in order to undermine the other's counterversion and to establish its own as the definite one. While, structurally, there are many similarities in the two letters, what distinguishes them is that they conceive of their objects (i.e. the text), subject positions, and political or moral values according to which they should be assessed in quite diametrically opposite ways. This thesis not only registers the various rhetorical ways the participants fashion their versions as definite ones, but also accounts for the differences in their contents.

Le present essai propose en premier lieu une analyse de la theorie linguistique de Walter Benjamin telle qu'enoncee dans son essai de 1916, Uber Sprache uberhaupt und uber die Sprache des Menschen. Dans un meme temps, il propose aussi une analyse de la theorie linguistique de la Kabbale telle qu'elaboree par Gershom Scholem tout au long de sa vie, dans un nombre non negligeable de publications, theorie dont il chercha a faire la synthese dans son essai de 1970, Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala. / Cet essai se propose ensuite de demontrer comment Scholem et Benjamin ont trouve dans l'oeuvre de Franz Kafka l'expression litteraire de leurs theories linguistiques. / En conclusion, cet essai se propose de demontrer comment Scholem et Benjamin, a partir de leurs theories linguistiques respectives, et malgre la proximite indeniable de celles-ci, en sont venus a interpreter Kafka d'une facon diametralement opposee. Scholem, en effet, voyait dans cette oeuvre l'expression d'une des theories les plus nihilistes de la Kabbale: Die Unvollziehbarkeit der Offenbarung, une negation de la Revelation divine; Benjamin voyait pour sa part chez Kafka l'expression d'une tres mince possibilite de redemption.

No description available.

The present study aims to bring into focus the antinomian doctrine of redemption through sin as it appears in Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière. According to Michelet, the witch-cult was both vestigial paganism and an attempt at overthrowing the Christian political order. The witch redeemed mankind by sinning against the Christian order, thus anticipating the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as the French Revolution. The notion of redemption through sin, borrowed from Gershom Scholem, will enable us to compare Michelet’s and Scholem’s approaches to history and counter-history. It will also allow us to read La Sorcière against a broader religious background than is usually employed. Among the sources of Michelet, the often overlooked kabbalistic, possibly Sabbatian, subtext will be assessed in relation to his peculiar female messianism. Likewise, the episode, in La Sorcière, of the encounter between the witch and the Jew will be thoroughly studied. This may lead us to better comprehend Michelet’s theology, with the biblical God being akin, in his opinion, to that of the witches.

This dissertation explores the relationship of two of the most prominent women intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. While they are not commonly considered to be related figures – Arendt is mainly recognized as a political thinker, Sontag is an icon of postwar popular culture – it has been anecdotally noted that they lived and worked in the same intellectual environment in postwar New York City, where their paths crossed a few times. However, a comprehensive systematic study of their relationship is missing. Starting from their Benjamin portraits of 1968 and 1978, I argue that Arendt’s and Sontag’s relationship is significant in terms of the German and US American tradition of literary criticism: Both women acted as transatlantic critics invested in cultural transfer between postwar US and Germany, and they employed similar styles of citation and editorial strategies to create and inscribe themselves into an authoritative literary tradition. With Arendt and Sontag, I discuss the critic’s task in terms of citational style and as a matter of taking care of literary traditions beyond national borders. As I demonstrate through comprehensive, in-depth archival analysis and close readings, Arendt and Sontag intervened with their Benjamin portraits in a heated debate about critical methods surrounding the editorial management of Benjamin’s estate and legacy through Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in late 1960s Germany. Arendt’s portrait made Benjamin’s work available to an English-speaking audience for the first time and Sontag popularized his prominence in the US even further. Both stage Benjamin as a literary figure rather than a philosopher. Stylistically, they employ related strategies of citational mimicry to create an intimate connection between their voices and Benjamin’s, granting even unfamiliar readers access to Benjamin’s complex writing. Through constant dialogue with his work, their affective and affirmative mediation has significant editorial qualities. By preserving and promoting Benjamin as a critic in the US, Arendt and Sontag created a transatlantic tradition of literary criticism in which they inscribed themselves to gain critical authority in singular yet similar ways. Tracing the relationship between the portraits archivally, I argue that their similar citational creation of discursive authority results from Sontag’s comprehensive study of Arendt’s work and is thus an example of critical skill building through stylistic imitation. Rendering the hidden citational traces between the portraits transparent, I show how this line of influence ironically yields a lack of credit to Arendt on Sontag’s part. Like Arendt, Sontag reifies rather than breaks patriarchal citational chains. Illuminating what Arendt calls a “hidden tradition” – consisting in stylistically visible yet inexplicit commonalities – I draw on terminology gained from the current debate on critical method in Western literary studies to argue that the portraits afford a concept of criticism between such polemic poles as “surface” versus “depth” reading, “description” versus “interpretation” or “affirmation” versus “suspicion.” Characterizing this critical nuance with Arendt and Sontag as related critics, my study delineates a genealogy of a transatlantic mode of close reading with hermeneutic roots and a feminist twist.