Witz at work: The comic and the grotesque in Edgar Hilsenrath, Jakov Lind, and George Tabori

Bashaw, Rita Barbara University of Minnesota 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

The dissertation is entitled, “Witz at Work: The Comic and the Grotesque in Works by Edgar Hilsenrath, George Tabori, and Jakov Lind.” It addresses Edgar Hilsenrath's novel, <italic>Der Nazi und der Friseur</italic> (1977); Jakov Lind's short story, <italic>Eine Seele aus Holz</italic> (1964); and George Tabori's play, <italic>Die Kannibalen</italic> (1968). These texts depict German fascism and the Holocaust with a moral ambivalence and grotesque humor that provoke both laughter and horror in readers. I incorporate historical, philosophical, and literary analysis in contending that a similar comic perspective underlies these texts and provides a substantial critique of the ways in which postwar German society remembered the Holocaust and defined German and Jewish identity. The dissertation maintains that, under certain circumstances, laughter and horror represent twin faces of a similar phenomenon: the confrontation of an intelligence with inexplicably incongruous material. The quality of being funny or laughable is neither necessary nor sufficient for material to be comic; instead, something can be comic when it presents an inherent juxtaposition that challenges us to recognize and reject certain events as contradictory or incoherent even though they may be presented as perfectly sensible. While this approach substantially narrows the field of what can pass as a comic experience, it serves the purpose of allowing us to appreciate comic texts as vehicles through which an audience can be provoked to engage in a consideration, and perhaps rejection of, traditional norms, social expectations, or accounts of history. Hilsenrath, Lind, and Tabori's texts are controversial and unsettling because they present a world of questionable and repugnant values. Yet, in depicting situations that highlight the contradictions inherent in, say, racially-based definitions of German and Jewish identity, these texts encourage us to imagine alternative ways of conceptualizing what it means to be German and Jewish after National Socialism. Instead of paralyzing readers with an overwhelming sense of tragedy and fate, these texts prod us to consider how certain responses to fascism are themselves socially, politically, and morally troubling. This approach, in turn, is more conducive toward helping Germans and Jews imagine a different future.

Mapping the Vagina: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Scientific Specularity

Bashaw, Ashley Elizabeth University of Washington 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation tracks the close and variegated imbrications of nineteenth-century science, literature, and cartography. It argues for the co-existence and co-dependency of nineteenth-century gynecology and literature through an application of cartographic history and theory to the two disciplines. Identifying these cultural formations as co-emergent subsequently creates space for an identification of their shared productivity: a violent and violating medico-clinical gaze resulting in the construction of a unique discursive field of cultural production---maps of women's bodies. Considering how gynecological maps deploy a clinical gaze that both racializes and genders bodies and in so doing reinscribes these bodies through relations of power remains a major aim of this project. A use of cartographic theory highlights the techniques and modes by which gynecological maps actually redefine and reconstruct bodies largely in service to white heteronormative aims. In this manner, gynecology, cartography, and literature are approached as political discourses whose objectives are frequently shared: the acquisition and maintenance of social power. At stake in an insistence on the centrality of mapping the female body to both nineteenth-century literature and gynecology is a destabilization of not only prevailing nineteenth-century presumptions about normative gender and sexuality, but also current presumptions that still remain attached to their nineteenth-century counterparts.

Martyrdom and sacred violence: Dying for God in Matthew and Ignatius

Bashaw, Jennifer Garcia Fuller Theological Seminary, Center for Advanced T 2012 해외박사(DDOD)

Abstract Scholars of early Christian martyrdom and its development have traced the roots of martyrdom through possible Jewish, Roman, and Greek literary influences. The only consensus that has emerged is that the idea of dying for someone else, of dying a noble or voluntary death, can be found throughout antiquity. How this idea made its metamorphosis into the second- through fourth-century Christian fervor for martyrdom remains a historical mystery. The NT is the main literary link we have between the early concepts of noble death and martyrdom in Jewish and Greek antiquity and the idea of martyrdom found in martyr acts of the early church. Thus, studying the concept of dying for God in NT literature and comparing the various theologies therein with those from later first- and second-century works should prove fruitful for uncovering clues regarding how the concept developed and what influences shaped it. This dissertation initiates a comparison between the martyr rhetoric found in Matthew's Gospel and in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, one of the church's earliest martyrs. Because these two authors and their works differ with regard to genre and purpose, this dissertation compares them using the flexible and interdisciplinary method of socio-rhetorical criticism and by adopting a religious studies theory as the framework of comparison. I employ Rene Girard's theory of violence and religion as a lens through which to view Matthew and Ignatius in order to isolate and illuminate the discrepancies between their martyrologies. It is my thesis that certain elements of Ignatius' martyr rhetoric, when viewed in comparison to Matthew, reveal that Ignatius' participates in the cycle of sacred violence, the very myth that Matthew's Gospel works to counter. Matthew releases humanity from the perpetual cycle of sacred violence, encouraging martyrs to be faithful witnesses but not seek death. Ignatius, however, envisions his own martyrdom as a sacrifice and himself as a scapegoat, and re-enters the cycle of sacred violence.

Montaigne and the skeptical tradition (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne)

Bashaw, Charles E The University of Wisconsin - Madison 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

The “skeptical crisis” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is widely believed to have been brought on by the Protestant Reformation and fueled primarily by the “rediscovery” of ancient skeptical teachings, particularly those found in the second-century writings attributed to Sextus Empiricus. In truth, however, the basic arguments of the ancient skeptics were known throughout the Middle Ages, and the flowering of skepticism in the early modern period was essentially the reaffirmation of a long-standing Christian commitment to the primacy of faith over reason that evolved in response to continuous and dramatic cultural upheaval rather than as a reaction to discreet, seminal events. Classical sources, some of which ultimately must be seen as more significant in this respect than the writings of Sextus Ernpiricus, played an important role, but so did Judeo-Christian materials that have received little attention in this context. An important figure in the story of early modern skepticism is the French essayist Michel de Montaigne, who is generally regarded as the most influential of the sixteenth-century skeptics. Montaigne's skepticism has often been portrayed as a mere phase in his thought, the temporary result of a personal skeptical crisis supposedly provoked by a reading of Sextus Empiricus, and relatively little attention has been devoted to other possible influences on Montaigne's skepticism. Recent Montaigne scholarship, however, has begun to address this problem and has demonstrated that skepticism is fundamental to Montaigne's outlook and to the <italic>Essais</italic> as a whole, and pre-dates his alleged encounter with Sextus Empiricus. Nonetheless, most scholars still regard Sextus Empiricus as one of the most important of Montaigne's sources, and considerable disagreement remains as to the impact of theological considerations and contemporary events on Montaigne's thought. In this study I argue that Montaigne's skepticism has more affinity with the doubt of Socrates and Augustine than with the skepticism of Sextus Empiricus and that his reflection on the human condition led him to a probabilistic, rather than a truly skeptical or relativistic, conception of knowledge in matters both earthly and divine.