Current projects and activities

Activities:

A volume on Paul Celan’s poetics, in collaboration with Prof Dr Karen Leeder (Oxford) and Prof Dr Michael Eskin (NY),  Paul Celan Today – A Companion came out with de Gruyter, series ’Companions to Contemporary German Culture’, in 2021, comprising over 20 contributions by leading international Celan-scholars and artists, including my chapter ‘Correspondences of and with Celan – Transfer Processes of Life’.

I received a British Academy research grant in 2017 for a project on the thinking language of Henri Meschonnic, financing a symposium at Queen Mary University of London on 22 September 2017 and two workshops (23 Sept 2017 / 24 Febr 2018) in view of the translation of key texts by Meschonnic for a Meschonnic Reader in English language. Six translators – Pier-Pascale Boulanger, Andrew Eastman, John Joseph, David Nowell Smith, Marko Pajević and Chantal Wright – translated over representative 300 pages of Meschonnic’s works in a cautiously designed collaboration, ensuring quality, consistency and correct terminology.

This resulted in a special issue of Comparative Critical Studies, Oct 2018, ed. by Marko Pajević and David Nowell Smith: Thinking Language with Henri Meschonnic, with an introduction and an article by myself; 

and in The Henri Meschonnic Reader: A Poetics of Society, ed. by Marko Pajević, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, with a substantial introduction by myself.

Other papers on Meschonnic are:

• ‘Penser la signifiance: pour une pensée poétique’, … la double articulation, on en crēve ! Repenser le signifiant, Université de Bordeaux, Colloque interdisciplinaire par le Groupe Interdisciplinaire d’Analyse Littérale (GRIAL), 31.3.-1.4. 2022
   
• ‘Die humboldtschen Grundlagen von Henri Meschonnics Rhythmustheorie und die Folgen für eine dialogische Übersetzungsphilosophie‘, Henri Meschonnics Rhythmuskonzept in Übersetzung und Übersetzungsforschung, Hildesheim, 2-5 October 2019
   
• ‘La Théorie du rythme d’Henri Meschonnic et le social – vers une pensée poétique’, Henri Meschonnic et la modernité: quel héritage intellectuel? Humanities State University, Moscow, 26-27 September 2019

• ‘Rhythm, the Political and the Human: Poetic Thinking and the Construction of Reality’, Key note at Rhythms, Madison, University of Wisconsin, 12-15 September 2019

• in Berlin: ‘Warum Sprachtheorie Gesellschaftstheorie ist. Zu Henri Meschonnics Poetik des Rhythmus’, invited paper, Spree-Athen, e.V., Literaturhaus Berlin, 14 Dec 2017

• in Montréal: ‘A Poetics of Society: Thinking Language with Henri Meschonnic’, invited paper at the Université de Montréal, Seminar of Prof John Leavitt, Anthropology, 5.10.2018

Other Publications on Meschonnic:

• Forthcoming: ‘Rhythm, the Political and the Human: Poetic Thinking and the Construction of Reality’, in Monatshefte, 113.1, 2021, 14-29
• Forthcoming in French plus Russian translation: ‘La Théorie du rythme d’Henri Meschonnic et le social: vers une pensée poétique’, in Henri Meschonnic et la modernité: quel héritage intellectuel?, Moscou, Presses universitaires de la RGGU, 2021
• Forthcoming: ‘Die humboldtschen Grundlagen von Meschonnics Rhythmustheorie und die Folgen für eine dialogische Übersetzungstheorie’, in Henri Meschonnics Rhythmuskonzept in Übersetzung und Übersetzungsforschung, hrsg. Von N. Mälzer/ M. Agnetta, Olms, Hildesheim, 2021
• Introduction to Henri Meschonnic ‘What is at Stake in a Theory of Rhythm’ (trans. Ch. Wright), in Rhythm and Critique. Technics, Modalities, Practices, ed. by P. Crespi and S. Manghani, Edinburgh UP, 2020, 79-81

Other papers and publications to promote the concept of poetic thinking include:

• ’The Semantics of the Absurd. On German Hermetic Poetry after 1945 and Political Commitment’, The Factor of Lyrical Poetry in the Formation of Literary Cultures, 14^th International Conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature, Tartu, 1-3.11.2021
   
• ‘Für weltbildende Philologien’, Zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel. Die Germanistik in Nordeuropa und im Baltikum Germanistische Begegnungstagung des DAAD, Riga, 5-8 December 2019

• ‘For a Reappreciation of the Literary in Literary Studies: Poetic Thinking’ Current State of Literary Theory, Research and Criticism in (Non-"Centric") National Cultures, University of Tartu 30 Sept-1 October 2019
• Published as: ‘For a Reappreciation of the Literary in Literary Studies: Poetic Thinking’, in Interlitteraria, 25/1, 2020, 8-15
• Forthcoming: ‘Poetic Thinking and the Constitution of our World. On Language and Reality’, in Thinking: Bioengineering of Science and Art, ed. by Nima Rezaei, series Integrated Science, Springer Nature, 2021

I received a British Academy research grant in 2016 for a project on the importance of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s thinking language today, financing a symposium at Queen Mary University of London on 29 April 2016 and resulting in a special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies:

Thinking Language. Wilhelm von Humboldt Now, editor together with David Nowell Smith, Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies, Oxford UP, 53/1, Jan 2017

This volume offers studies on one of the crucial language thinkers at the basis of poetic thinking. Humboldt, albeit one of the most important language thinkers of all times and very influential particularly in Germany and France, has been little studied in Anglophone academia and this volume intends to trigger a more intensive reception of his work.

I also used a more popular form to disseminate some of the basic ideas in

• ‘Poetic Thinking. How to conceptualise the flow of life’, TEDxRoyalholloway talk, 18 Oct 2014

And gave several papers on the concept:

• ‘Poetisches Denken in der Wissenschaft’, invited paper in the research seminar ‘Plurale Perspektiven auf Traditionen und Geschichte von Pädagogik bzw. Erziehungswissenschaft’, FH Bielefeld, 10 Nov 2015

• ‘Poetisches Denken – Der Mensch im Wechselverhältnis von Sprach- und Lebensform’, invited paper, Spree-Athen, e.V., Literaturhaus Berlin, 10 Oct 2014

• ‘Poetological Anthropology as Potentialist Anthropology’, invited paper at the workshop Universalism revisited. Poetological, Philosophical and Historical Encounters at the School of Advanced Studies, organised by Markus Messling, University of London, 14 Mar 2014

• ‘Poetisches Denken’, invited paper for the Research Group Bildakt und Verkörperung at the Humboldt-University Berlin, 16 Dec 2013

This overarching project found its first concrete substantial manifestion in my habilitation (qualification for professorship) on Poetic Thinking and the Human. Foundations of a poetological Anthropology at the University of Rouen in 2012; published as Poetisches Denken und die Frage nach dem Menschen. Grundzüge einer poetologischen Anthropologie, Karl Alber Verlag, Reihe Dia-Logik, Freiburg i.Br., 2012 (358 pp.). 

In this book I develop a theory of poetic thinking based primarily on philosophico-historical anthropology, the linguistic anthropologies of Jürgen Trabant and Henri Meschonnic as well as the dialogical thought of Martin Buber, and I apply this approach to contemporary literature and film.

A presentation of this book is available here.

I presented some of the ideas in several papers:

• ‘Sprachdenken: Theory of language (Humboldt / Trabant) and its anthropological consequences’, paper at the AGS-conference in London, 3 April 2011

• ‘Das poetische Prinzip der Metamorphose bei Paul Celan’, paper at the Universität Leipzig, 18 May 2011

• ‘Metamorphosis as a poetical principle, at the example of a poem by Paul Celan’, invited paper, University of Cyprus, 10 Nov 2010

• ‘Jenseits des Zeichens. Henri Meschonnics Poetik des Zusammenhangs’, paper, Universität Leipzig, 12 Jan 2010

• ‘Beyond the Sign. Henri Meschonnic’s Poetics of Rhythm and Continuum. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Language’, invited paper, University College Cork, 3 Dec 2009

• 'Beyond the Sign. Henri Meschonnic’s Poetics of Rhythm and Continuum. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Language’, invited paper, University of Warwick, 24 Nov 2009

My PhD-thesis on the poetics of Paul Celan initiated the project by establishing the connection of Celan’s poetics and the query about the human, demonstrating that this particular dealing with language represents a reflection on what it means to be human, not only thematically but also in its elaborated poetic forms; published as Zur Poetik Paul Celans: Gedicht und Mensch – Die Arbeit am Sinn, Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, Band 177, Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg, 2000 (310 pp.)
 

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