Inaug.-Diss.: Fachbereich Neuere deutsche Literatur und Kunstwissenschaften: Marburg a.d. Lahn: 1975. _ Bibliogr. p. 288-298.

This thesis broaches an understanding of the perplexing concept of violence in the philosophy of Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her sporadic appeal to the dramatic category of the Trauerspiel (mourning-play) and its opposite, comedy. Understood in their context as contrasting images of philosophy’s project in the aftermath of 20th century catastrophe, the dramatic categories of the Trauerspiel and comedy are shown to be critical conceptual resources for making sense of the function of violence in Rose’s late work. I begin by contextualizing Rose’s invocation of the Trauerspiel through an exploration of Rose’s engagement with Walter Benjamin’s study of 17th century German mourning-plays. In this 17th century context, the Trauerspiel dramatizes the melancholic aftermath of the Lutheran repudiation of “good works” and its implication in violence and political intrigue. Building on Benjamin’s intimation of the enduring significance of this link between melancholy and violence, I show how Rose uses the dramatic image of the Trauerspiel to characterize the predicament of postmodern philosophy. Philosophy, conceived as a Trauerspiel, interminably mourns the losses produced by the diremptions of modernity. By refusing to complete this work of mourning, however, the dirempted conditions of violence are left intact, thereby re-enforcing and reifying what is abhorred. Against this melancholic conception of philosophy as a Trauerspiel, Rose gives an account of philosophy as a comedy that figures violence, when reckoned with, as a precondition of education in the law. Through a comedic double movement, violence is understood retrospectively as a representable aspect of modernity’s dirempted history and prospectively as a necessary risk of thinking and acting in a dirempted world. By attending to this comedic aspect of Rose’s conception of violence I am afforded an interpretive position from which to criticize two prominent interpretations of Rose that over- and underemphasize the stakes of her investment in the question of violence. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis analyzes the concept of violence in the late work of the philosopher Gillian Rose (1947-1995) by examining her use of two dramatic categories: the Trauerspiel (or mourning-play) and comedy. Understood as contrasting accounts of the predicament of contemporary philosophy, the Trauerspiel and its opposite, comedy, function as a window into Rose’s understanding of the relation between philosophy and violence. I show how Rose appeals to the Trauerspiel to illustrate a problematic link between modern melancholy and violence, which is then used to demonstrate the implication of contemporary philosophy’s obsession with loss in violence. Rose’s account of philosophy as a comedy, by contrast, avoids the mournful reproduction of violence by figuring violence as a necessary part of acting in, and thinking about, the modern world. This emphasis on the “comedic” aspect of Rose’s conception of violence constitutes an original reading of Rose that challenges existing scholarly interpretations.

My dissertation, entitled, The Origin of Korean Trauerspiel: Gwangju, Stasis, Justice, argues that the vertiginous vicissitudes of contemporary South Korea since 1997 can be best described in terms of what Walter Benjamin calls Trauerspiel, or Mourning Play. This project identifies the 15-year period as the time-space of a series of suspended and thwarted mourning, in which death, be it in the past or present, hardly partakes of the economy of justice or sacrifice as it putatively does in tragedy in view of a new community to come. Drawing attention to the peculiar interplay between two contemporary catalysts of stasis, or civil war, i.e., the special amnesty granted in 1997 to ex-President Chun Doo-Hwan for his executive role in the Gwangju Massacre in May 1980 and the U.S. War on Terror since 2002, for which 3 Korean civilian hostages were kidnapped and brutally executed in 2004 and 2007, I argue that both serve to render naught the sublime causes (e.g. Democracy, Justice, and Peace) as well as human lives sacrificed in relation to them, generating a genuine crisis of politics and ethics. By analyzing contemporary Korean cinema (e.g. films by Park Chan-wook, Bong Jun-ho, and Kim Jee-woon) and literature (e.g. Kim Hoon) of this period as allegory of this crisis, I show how attempts at doing justice are complicated and increasingly frustrated by progressive dissolution of a series of traditional distinctions between Victim and Perpetrator, Friend and Enemy, and Justice and Vengeance, leading to universal failures of mourning, only to constitute a vast singular Trauerspiel, or Mourning Play.