Presented By: Comparative Literature
Author's Forum Presents "The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West"
A Conversation with Silke-Maria Weineck and Jonathan Freedman
Silke-Maria Weineck reads from her new book, which won the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, followed by a discussion with Jonathan Freedman and audience Q & A.
Theories of power have always been intertwined with theories of fatherhood: paternity is the oldest and most persistent metaphor of benign, legitimate rule. The paternal trope gains its strength from its integration of law, body, and affect-in the affirmative model of fatherhood, the biological father, the legal father, and the father who protects and nurtures his children are one and the same, and in a complex system of mutual interdependence, the father of the family is symbolically linked to the paternal gods of monotheism and the paternal ruler of the monarchic state.
If tragedy is the violent eruption of a necessary conflict between competing, legitimate claims, The Tragedy of Fatherhood argues that fatherhood is an essentially tragic structure. Silke-Maria Weineck traces both the tensions and various strategies to resolve them through a series of readings of seminal literary and theoretical texts in the Western cultural tradition. In doing so, she demonstrates both the fragility and resilience of fatherhood as the most important symbol of political power.
A long history of fatherhood in literature, philosophy, and political thought, The Tragedy of Fatherhood weaves together figures as seemingly disparate as Aristotle, Freud, Kafka, and Kleist, to produce a stunning reappraisal of the nature of power in the Western tradition.
Silke-Maria Weineck is chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche (SUNY Press, 2002).
Jonathan Freedman is professor of English, American and Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan. He has written on late-19th- and early 20th-century literature, film, and Jewish-American cultural formations.
The Author's Forum is a collaboration between the U-M Institute for the Humanities, University Library, & Ann Arbor Book Festival.
Additional support for this event provided by the departments of German, English, and American Culture.
Today's book signing and sale courtesy of Literati Bookstore.
Theories of power have always been intertwined with theories of fatherhood: paternity is the oldest and most persistent metaphor of benign, legitimate rule. The paternal trope gains its strength from its integration of law, body, and affect-in the affirmative model of fatherhood, the biological father, the legal father, and the father who protects and nurtures his children are one and the same, and in a complex system of mutual interdependence, the father of the family is symbolically linked to the paternal gods of monotheism and the paternal ruler of the monarchic state.
If tragedy is the violent eruption of a necessary conflict between competing, legitimate claims, The Tragedy of Fatherhood argues that fatherhood is an essentially tragic structure. Silke-Maria Weineck traces both the tensions and various strategies to resolve them through a series of readings of seminal literary and theoretical texts in the Western cultural tradition. In doing so, she demonstrates both the fragility and resilience of fatherhood as the most important symbol of political power.
A long history of fatherhood in literature, philosophy, and political thought, The Tragedy of Fatherhood weaves together figures as seemingly disparate as Aristotle, Freud, Kafka, and Kleist, to produce a stunning reappraisal of the nature of power in the Western tradition.
Silke-Maria Weineck is chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche (SUNY Press, 2002).
Jonathan Freedman is professor of English, American and Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan. He has written on late-19th- and early 20th-century literature, film, and Jewish-American cultural formations.
The Author's Forum is a collaboration between the U-M Institute for the Humanities, University Library, & Ann Arbor Book Festival.
Additional support for this event provided by the departments of German, English, and American Culture.
Today's book signing and sale courtesy of Literati Bookstore.
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