Heine and Critical Theory

Description

Heinrich Heine's role in the formation of Critical Theory has been systematically overlooked in the course of the successful appropriation of his thought by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and the legacy they left, in particular for Adorno, Benjamin and the Frankfurt School. This book examines the critical connections that led Adorno to call for a "reappraisal" of Heine in a 1948 essay that, published posthumously, remains under-examined. Tracing Heine's Jewish difference and its liberating comedy of irreverence in the thought of the Frankfurt School, the book situates the project of Critical Theory in the tradition of a praxis of critique, which Heine elevates to the art of public controversy. Heine's bold linking of aesthetics and political concerns anticipates the critical paradigm assumed by Benjamin and Adorno. Reading Critical Theory with Heine recovers a forgotten voice that has theoretically critical significance for the formation of the Frankfurt School. With Heine, the project of Critical Theory can be understood as the sustained effort to advance the emancipation of the affects and the senses, at the heart of a theoretical vision that recognizes pleasure as the liberating force in the fight for freedom.

Willi Goetschel is Professor of German and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada.

[A] tremendous pleasure to read ... the author himself seems to emulate the poet in a witty, deep, and occasionally casual style of essayistic writing. The book projects lightness and ease that result not from superficiality, but rather from profound insight and broad knowledge ... Goetschel is uniquely equipped to shed light on the hitherto rarely discussed relationship between Heine and Critical Theory. * Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies * [A] lucidly far-sighted and impeccably researched account ... [A] labor of love as of longform library research, written, in the spirit of its profoundly admired subject, with an exquisitely unpretentious, seductively light touch ... The summit of Goetschel's incisive interpretive thinking and prodigious scholarship to date. * The Germanic Review * Goetschel details in systematic fashion how Heine's work comedic, performative, hybridizing, and subversive writing anticipates multiple major threads of Critical Theory. * Heine-Jahrbuch * This collection of essays by one of the leading Heine scholars offers valuable insight and ideas both for the specialist as well as for Germanists and critical theorists of all stripes. * The German Quarterly * [This] is one of the most comprehensive and powerful accounts of Heine's philosophical significance published in English. * H-Judaic * [Author Willi Goetschel] provides Heine studies with numerous trenchant and provocative commentaries, and he forces scholars of Critical Theory to reconsider its origins, its indebtedness to Jewish tradition, and its relationship to one of the greatest literary figures of the nineteenth century. * Monatshefte * [The book] deliberately transcends disciplinary boundaries and thus emphatically points to the homelessness ... and incompleteness of both Heine's writing and the emancipatory project of the Frankfurt School. * Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift (Bloomsbury Translation) * This work of deep scholarship and careful analysis shows incontrovertibly that Heine was not only one of the preeminent German-language poets of modern times, but also a social theorist of great insight whose influence on such varied thinkers as Freud, Marx and Nietzsche was profound and lasting. In particular, Willi Goetschel shows in detail how Heine's account of Jewish 'difference' as paradigmatic of the experience of modernity was the basic template for the Frankfurt School's theoretical approach. Scholars of the Frankfurt School will be surprised by the wealth of new perspectives that Goetschel opens up, but this dazzlingly clear treatment will also appeal to those with no special scholarly expertise in this area. -- Raymond Geuss, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK This detailed study demonstrates the continuity of a German-Jewish tradition from Heine to Adorno and other members of the Frankurt School. At stake is the formulation of Jewish identity against the backdrop of a critical understanding of modernity. Goetschel makes a compelling argument for the urgency of the poet Heine and the emancipatory substance of literature. -- Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University, USA Willi Goetschel, with admirable erudition, demonstrates the central role of Heine's work in determining the theoretical and political perspectives of the Frankfurt School. He argues very persuasively that Heine's position as an "unsuccessful" convert to Christianity who was never regarded by others as anything other than the Jew he in fact truly became only at the moment of his conversion, allowed him to articulate a critique of Enlightenment universalism that Adorno and Horkheimer attempted to deepen in The Dialectic of Enlightenment. For Goetschel, however, Heine's critique of the dominant forms of universalism surpasses theirs by emphasizing the perpetually renewed need for a violent reduction of the different to the same that characterizes these forms in their diversity. Goetschel has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Heine's importance for the history of critical theory and for addressing the most difficult issues of our own time. -- Warren Montag, Brown Family Professor in Literature, Occidental College, USA