Articles by Michael McGillen
The Germanic Review, 2018
This contribution explores the problem of a historical passage between the German past and the Am... more This contribution explores the problem of a historical passage between the German past and the American present in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl through an analysis of its scenes of transit and technologized movement. Reading Johnson’s work in terms of the Freudian theory of trauma, it argues that Jahrestage registers traumatic experience not only in the challenge of remembering the past but also in the repetition of trauma in the present. Scenes of transportation in the New York level of the novel provide a surface on which the psychic processes of Gesine’s response to trauma— from repression to transference and repetition—become visible. Yet by encoding trauma in scenes rather than in narrative terms, Johnson does not resolve the disconnect between the two historical levels of Jahrestage.
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New German Critique, 2018
The historiographical status of Erich Auerbach’s theory of figural interpretation, which he devel... more The historiographical status of Erich Auerbach’s theory of figural interpretation, which he develops in “Figura” (1938) and Mimesis (1946), is complex. In its insistence on the fundamental historicity of its objects—of both the figure and its fulfillment—it carries forth the historicist paradigms of Giambattista Vico and G. W. F. Hegel, yet in its assertion of figural relations that traverse the historical continuum beyond historical causation, figural interpretation troubles prevailing nineteenth-century models of historiography. Analyzing Auerbach’s turn to the seriality of figures in his late essay “Typological Motifs” (1953), the present article argues that the temporality of serial repetition provides a key to understanding the antihistoricist elements of Auerbach’s historiography, which breaks with the messianic logic of progressive fulfillment. Contextualizing Auerbach’s theory of the figure in relation to the historiographical innovations of Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg, the revival of seriality in modernist aesthetics, and the narrative forms of twentieth-century literature, it argues that Auerbach’s work was shaped more significantly by modernist aesthetics and culture than has hitherto been recognized. Far from merely secularizing figural interpretation by subtracting its transcendent referent, Auerbach’s insight into the seriality of the figure provides an indication of what figurality might look like under the conditions of modernity.
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McGillen, Michael. “Zwischen Bildlichkeit und Auflösung des Bildes: Ästhetik des Religiösen in Hu... more McGillen, Michael. “Zwischen Bildlichkeit und Auflösung des Bildes: Ästhetik des Religiösen in Hugo Balls expressionistischen Gedichten.” Expressionismus 3 (2016): 83–91.
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McGillen, Michael. “Lapsarian Repetitions: Iterations of the Fall in Kafka and Kierkegaard.” Kafk... more McGillen, Michael. “Lapsarian Repetitions: Iterations of the Fall in Kafka and Kierkegaard.” Kafka und die Religion in der Moderne. Eds. Manfred Engel and Ritchie Robertson. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2014. 93–115.
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McGillen, Michael. "Theology’s Weimar Moment: History before the Eschatological Limit." The Weima... more McGillen, Michael. "Theology’s Weimar Moment: History before the Eschatological Limit." The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law. Eds. Leonard Kaplan and Rudy Koshar, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012. 269–287.
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Conference Papers by Michael McGillen
McGillen, Michael. “Spatial Form and the Dialectics of Non-Presence in Karl Barth’s Römerbrief.” ... more McGillen, Michael. “Spatial Form and the Dialectics of Non-Presence in Karl Barth’s Römerbrief.” Out of the Moment: Modalities of Non-Presence, 130th Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Vancouver, January 8–11, 2015.
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McGillen, Michael. “Foundations of the Secular in Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy.” The Subs... more McGillen, Michael. “Foundations of the Secular in Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy.” The Substance of the Secular, German Studies Association’s 38th Annual Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, September 18–21, 2014.
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McGillen, Michael. “Religious Experience as Narrative Rupture: Robert Musil’s ‘Other Condition’.”... more McGillen, Michael. “Religious Experience as Narrative Rupture: Robert Musil’s ‘Other Condition’.” Interpreting Experience — Experiencing Interpretation: Im/Possibilities of a Hermeneutics of Religious Experience, University of Oxford, April 3–6, 2014.
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McGillen, Michael. “Shipwreck of Language: Metaphor and the Limit of Knowledge in Blumenberg and ... more McGillen, Michael. “Shipwreck of Language: Metaphor and the Limit of Knowledge in Blumenberg and Celan.” Work-in-Progress Seminar, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, May 21, 2013.
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McGillen, Michael. “The Poetics of Place: Hölderlin’s Scene of Writing.” The World Elsewhere, 20t... more McGillen, Michael. “The Poetics of Place: Hölderlin’s Scene of Writing.” The World Elsewhere, 20th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, UC Berkeley, March 16–18, 2012.
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McGillen, Michael. “Religion as Social Politics in Hermann Cohen.” Rhetorics of Religion in Germa... more McGillen, Michael. “Religion as Social Politics in Hermann Cohen.” Rhetorics of Religion in Germany 1900–1940, Princeton University, March 31–April 2, 2011.
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McGillen, Michael. “From Figura to Typology: Reading and Writing Theological Time in Eric Auerbac... more McGillen, Michael. “From Figura to Typology: Reading and Writing Theological Time in Eric Auerbach’s Philology.” Endlich schreiben – endlich lesen. Reading and Writing Time in German Literature, 6th Biennial International Graduate Student Conference in German Studies, Johns Hopkins University, December 3–4, 2010.
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Articles by Michael McGillen
Conference Papers by Michael McGillen