Working Papers in the Humanities 2
Louise Crowther, Astrid Ensslin, Jennifer Shepherd
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Diderot, Spinoza, and the Question of Virtue
Louise Crowther
doi:10.59860/wph.a47bd1d

This paper focuses on the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot (1713-84) and the extent to which, in his portrayal of virtue, he can be said to demonstrate convergences of ideas with Spinoza. The texts that form the primary basis for a consideration of Diderot’s post-Spinozist mentality are Le Fils naturel, Le Neveu de Rameau and Mme de la Carlière. As a preliminary to this study, I firstly examine Spinoza’s thinking regarding virtue and the necessity of moderation in its exercise, before turning my attention to Diderot’s texts. I argue that Diderot’s works reveal significant similarities to Spinoza’s thinking, which thus highlights Diderot’s radicalism and the wide-reaching impact of Spinoza on the Enlightenment. The over-arching purpose of my thesis is to consider how Lessing and Diderot dealt with the impact of Spinozist thought and to analyze the extent to which they can be said to exemplify a post-Spinozist mentality in their portrayal of three main issues: virtue and vice; freedom; and natural religion. The aim of my thesis is not to demonstrate the direct influence of Spinoza on Lessing since it is notoriously difficult to trace influences in intellectual history. It seeks rather to locate similarities or differences of approach in their treatment of these issues. The originality of my thesis lies in its analysis of Lessing’s and Diderot’s literary works as the evidence for demonstrating their post-Spinozist mentality, especially as these works have been somewhat neglected in studies of the relationship between these thinkers.

‘Botschafter der Musik’: The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Role of Classical Music in Post-War German Identity
Lauren Freede
doi:10.59860/wph.a58b15a

This working paper looks at the role of classical music in the establishment of modern German identity. My wider doctoral research project examines the importance of music in shaping differing senses of positive collective identity in both West Germany and Austria since the 1920s, and explores the exclusion of classical music from critical memory narratives, with particular reference to musical autobiographies. This paper focuses more narrowly on the situation in Germany immediately after World War II. While traditional accounts of the period tend to deal with individual musicians, I argue that musical institutions were central to a sense of being German. A brief case study of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra illustrates the tangled relationship between music and politics, and shows the ways in which musical identity was contested. Germans saw positive continuity in their mastery of the classical tradition, while the American occupiers saw the German belief in their musical superiority as a dangerous and unstable base for national restoration. My analysis of the Orchestra reveals that classical music was adopted as a politically neutral source of national pride despite being both highly susceptible to political manipulation and implicated in past militaristic and racist ideologies from which it was supposedly aloof.

Germany’s Identity Problems as Reflected in Nineteenth-Century Literature
Hans-Joachim Hahn
doi:10.59860/wph.a69a5a1

This article asseses the reception of western concepts of nation as portrayed during the French Revolution of 1789, both in the literature of Schubart, Bürger, Klopstock and Wieland and in the philosophy of Herder and Fichte. The development of this concept of nationality during the wars against Napoleon and the policies of the Vormärz, up to the 1848 Revolutions is examined with special reference to the more collective, exclusive and authoritarian tendencies after 1848 and during a period of Realpolitik. Part two of the paper examines how literature and in particular popular histories of literature have reflected on these developments. The paper concludes that major elements of existing western concepts of national identity were not met by the establishment of the German nation state in 1871 and that these concepts were fulfilled only after Germany’ s ‘second unification’ in 1990.

The Translation of Identity: Subtitling the Vernacular of the French cité
Pierre-Alexis Mével
doi:10.59860/wph.a6b57a8

This paper looks at how the process of translation impacts on the relocation of identity in the field of audiovisual translation, more specifically in that of subtitling. The language used by the three protagonists in the French film La Haine is remarkable both linguistically and culturally, and is clearly a means for them to assert their identity. In using such a variety of French, the three young people in the film not only assert their belonging to a very specific community of practice, but also exclude whoever does not belong to their group. This paper looks at the particular case of La Haine, and comments on what is achieved – as well as what is not achieved – by the English subtitles written by Alexander Whitelaw and Stephen O’Shea in the Tartan Video version (1996). The paper will analyse the implications of using a variety of English such as African American Vernacular English to translate a variety of French such as the one spoken in the cités (projects). The use of a dialect-for-dialect approach means that all cultural references in the original are transposed to the target culture. The implication of this is that the original undergoes a displacement of identity in the process of translation. I question whether the identity thus fabricated by the translators matches the images shown on screen, and subsequently if this approach is, in this particular context, successful or not. This paper draws on my MA dissertation, the wider purpose of which is to analyse the various reasons why a dialect-for-dialect approach may not necessarily work when it comes to audiovisual translation, through the study of the two sets of subtitles available for La Haine.

The Leibnizian Monad and the Self through the Lens of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s and Samuel Beckett’s Writings
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi
doi:10.59860/wph.a7c4b8b

This paper examines the reinterpretation of the Leibnizian notion of the monad in relation to the concept of the self by two contemporary twentieth-century European authors, Carlo Emilio Gadda and Samuel Beckett. By analyzing how far they both refashion and distort the rationalist philosopher’s terminology and its basic tenets, in particular those relating to the concept of identity, I intend to show how a comparative approach to these two artistic processes brings to light some essential features of both Gadda’s and Beckett’s notion of identity and its disintegration. As I shall argue, the contrast which transpires between the Leibnizian, divinely inspired theory of pre-established harmony and the two modern authors’ critique of the latter highlights some of the main characteristics of the modernist crisis of the unitary idea of the self, and it crystallizes a number of unexpected parallel traits in the oeuvre of the two writers. For this purpose, particular attention will be given to Gadda’s early theoretical writings and Beckett’s early fiction up to the French Trilogy. My wider research project centres on a comparative study of the concept of artistic creation in the work of both authors, with a particular focus on their individual techniques of linguistic and narrative displacement. The potential parallels between the two authors have hardly been discussed in secondary literature to date, and Gadda in particular, who is often considered an isolated phenomenon in a national literary context, has not received due attention on a European literary platform.