"Hating at the Limits of Conscience: Luther’s Praeteritions”
Germans like to think of Martin Luther as the creator of the German language, supplying every possible excuse for his vitriol, including his inflammatory rhetorical attacks on marginalized groups. This talk undertakes a speculative wager: what if Germans identify with Luther and his language, up to the present day, not in spite of but because of Luther’s legendary verbal aggressivity? What can Luther teach us about the community-founding power of hate? In the German imaginary, Luther stands as the embodiment of bold speech, prefiguring the stereotype of Germans being ‘direct but honest’ (inspired by the idea of clarita scripturae). However, Luther turns out to be a far more twisted and cunning rhetor of hate than is commonly acknowledged, one who mobilizes distinctively metaphysical figures. Among these figures is preterition, or ‘saying without saying,’ which bears a structural resemblance to conscience in that it symptomatically marks an awareness of what ought to be suppressed but which is nonetheless articulated, however indirectly. The talk will close by turning to the only, highly ambiguous mention of Luther in Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which strikes a sharp contrast with Luther’s infelicitous preterition, sending us on a vertigo-inducing philological chase.
With Associate Prof. Barbara N. Nagel
Barbara Nagel is Associate Professor of German at Princeton; she is the author of Der Skandal des Literalen and Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond and recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship and the Berlin Prize.
Registration is required.
