Leaving Graecogermania

 

"Die 'Universitaeten' als 'Staetten der wissenschaftlichen Forschung und Lehre' (solcher Art sind sie Gebilde des 19. Jahrhunderts) werden zu reinen und immer 'wirklichkeitsnaeheren' Betriebsanstalten, in denen nichts zur Entscheidung kommt. Den letzten Rest einer Kulturdekoration werden sie nur so lange behalten, als sie vorerst noch zugleich Mittel zur 'kulturpolitischen' Propaganda bleiben muessen."

(Martin Heidegger, Beitraege zur Philosophie, c. 1937)

It's already November and I haven't posted anything here since June. There was no interesting event I've been to and of which I could have given an account. After last year's disappointment (see April post) I didn't feel like attending Translation Day, all the more, since there hasn't been any notable sign of interest in my work as a translator into English for the last two years, i.e. since I arrived in the UK. This concerns mainly my translation of Yiannis Ritsos, in which respect i once again have to ask the question I already had to ask in my time in Greece (in regard to German), the question why the rare case of a translator who really knows the source language is ignored, while translations by non-native speakers that are full of obvious mistakes are promoted and published.

I had originally planned to do a proper wrap-up, something like "Looking back on my second year in Britain", but I won't. This ought to have included some more criticism in regard to my experiences with literary and academic circles, but I don't want to put all of that in a blog post. The review of a contemporary English novel I have uploaded on my Academia page contains some hints in this respect, in and between the lines, you can find it here (German version).

As far as my reading is concerned, this year it mainly accompanied my repoliticization. In this respect, Claire Provost's and Matt Kennard's Silent Coup came to function for me as a counterpart of field work journalism to Hardt/Negri's theoretical left wing classic Empire, providing a lot of material and concrete insight to better understand the establishment of deterritorialised capital power and the further oligarchisation of the global economy, to give just two examples. I also tried to get a better picture of the whole of the British left without pretending that I have gained more than fragmentary impressions and assumptions. For example, I have also read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism that for some seems to occupy an exceptional position in recent left wing publishing. I used to follow blogs from writers whose books came out with houses like Zero and Repeater Books, so maybe I'm not all new to a certain kind of cultural methodology. One particular impression that stood out among the questions that arose from my reading of Fisher's book was that, despite the McLuhans, the Zizeks and the Jamesons, modernity still seems to prove to be a quite stubborn phenomenon, as my doctoral supervisor pointed out in his History of Literary Modernity, and as probably also somebody like Camille de Toledo would still uphold.

All of this of course in a globalised perspective. Speaking of which, we all have recently witnessed how the systemic "logic" of terrorism has once again lead to an escalation in a conflict in the Middle East. Like the instrumentalization of the war in Ukraine reminds people of my generation or older of similar processes at the time of the post-Yugoslav wars, the propaganda following the Hamas and the Israeli attacks is reminiscent of post-9/11 propaganda, only that hypocrisy and outright political perversion seem to have taken a different form. These events and the ongoing abuse of state power make it all the more urgent for the left to maintain its traditional values and to exercise its historical duties. 

Which leads me back to the sphere of academia, a sphere that very often seems to face strange difficulties when trying to hold on to its traditional role, at least in the humanities. From 2019 on I have paved my way back to university. The original idea was to write a second monograph, an extensive study about the influence of German literature on the work of 19th century Greek writer Georgios Vizyinos that would serve as a habilitation in Germany. It would have been a natural continuation of the work of my parents, since my upbringing and my education predestined me to play a key role in the research of the history of Greek-German relations.

Due to the absurdity of European politics I had to revise this plan. No habilitation and goodbye Greece. Hello London and the uncertainty of migration. It didn't stop me from continuing my theoretical work together with my literary production. A few weeks ago I conceived the plan of putting together a tome that will consist of essays I have written from 2006 until today with poetic subjectivity as the central theme and Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Paul Celan and Gottfried Benn as the main protagonists. These days I'm working on the last essay that will try to shed light on the different meaning of subjectivity in Heidegger and Buber.

That much for my way back to academia. In the last two years I have taken part in quite a few seminars, conferences and discussions. It felt good to be part of that community again. The next step should be a post at university. Despite the difficult position that the humanities occupy today, they can still provide the environment that a researcher like me needs to utilize his knowledge and contribute to the right kind of education.