Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Asholt

Vergangene FRIAS-Aufenthalte

• April 2012 - Sept.2012

CV

Born in 1944, Ratsgymnasium Bielefeld, military service, studies of History and French in Münster, Paris, Limoges, doctoral fellowship and assistant in the University of Münster (Romanisches Seminar) 1972 – 1980; doctoral thesis 1975, thesis of habilitation 1982.
Professor in French Literature (University of Osnabrück) 1980 – 1994, Professor of French Literature (University of Potsdam) 1995 – 1997, Professor of Romance Literature (University of Osnabrück) up from 1997.
Visiting Fellow in the universities of: Orléans (1989/90), Paris IV Sorbonne (1999/2000), Paris III Sorbonne nouvelle (2008), Clermont-Ferrand (2009).
Main interests: French and Spanish literature of the 19th and 20th century, Avant-garde theory and avant-garde manifestoes, avant-garde movements (Dada and Surrealism), Theory of literature today (Life science – Lebenswissenschaft, Literature and History), Travel literature and literature of the Spanish Civil War.
Editor of two reviews: Frankreich Jahrbuch (1996 – 2005), Lendemains. Etudes comparées sur la France (since 2000, Tübingen: Gunter Narr)
Editor of the collection “edition lendemains” (26 vol., Tübingen: Gunter Narr)
Advisory board: reviews: Romanesques (Paris) since 2008; Fixxion (electronic review, Paris/Gent), since 2010.
Advisory board: collection “European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, since 2009, Berlin: de Gruyter)
 

Publikationen (Auswahl):

Books and Editions

• Manifeste und Proklamationen der europäischen Avantgarde (1909 - 1938), Stuttgart: Metzler 1995. 2. Aufl. 2005 (ed. with Walter Fähnders)
• Französische Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Metzler 2006.
• Jean-Richard Bloch ou A la découverte du monde connu: Jérusalem et Berlin (1925 – 1928), Paris: Honoré Champion 2010 (Bibliothèque d’études juives, Nr. 40) (ed. with Claudine Delphis)

Proceedings

• "Die ganze Welt ist eine Manifestation". Die europäische Avantgarde und ihre Manifeste, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1997 (ed. with W. Fähnders).
• Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer. Avantgarde – Avantgardekritik – Avantgardeforschung, Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi 2000 (Avantgarde Critical Studies Nr. 14) (ed. with W. Fähnders).
• 19. Jahrhundert. Roman. (Reihe: Französische Literatur, hg. von Henning Krauß), Tübingen: Stauffenburg 2007 (ed.).
• Surréalisme et politique – Politique du surréalisme, Amsterdam : Rodopi 2007 (AvantGarde Critical Studies No. 22) (ed. with Hans Theo Siepe)

• Literaturwissenschaft als Lebenswissenschaft. Programm – Projekte – Perspektiven, Tübingen: Narr 2009 (edition lendemains Nr. 20) ed. with Ottmar Ette

• Assia Djebar. Littérature et transmission, Paris : Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle 2010 (ed. with Mireille Calle-Gruber and Dominique Combes)

• Un Retour des normes romanesques dans la littérature française contemporaine, Paris : Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle 2011 (ed. with Marc Dambre)

Articles

• « Avant-Garde, Avant-Gardes or Modernism. What remains of the Avant-Garde Project ? », in: Phrasis 2009 (1), S. 45 – 61.
• “Erzählformen der “mémoire immédiate“ bei Assia Djebar: Le blanc de l’Algérie (1995) und La disparition de la langue française (2003) », in : K. Dickhaut / St. Wodianka (Hg.) : Geschichte – Erinnerung – Ästhetik, Tübingen : Narr 2010, S. 213 – 226.
• « « Ecrire au vif : retrouver « la vive voix » à travers l’écrit ». Anmerkungen zur oraten und literaten Sprache bei Céline », in : Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 1/2 (2010), S. 137 – 160 (gem. mit Utz Maas, Kristina Rabanus und Frauke Tönjes)
• « « Longtemps, l’Allemagne » : Deutschland in französischen Gegenwartsromanen », in : L. Albertin (Hg.): Deutschland und Frankreich in der Europäischen Union, Tübingen: Narr 2010, S. 207 – 221 (edition lendemains Bd. 23).

• « La critique littéraire et le sens de la vie », Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 3/4
  (2010), S. 447 – 455.
   

FRIAS-Projekt

Avant-garde and/or Modernism: what remains of the avant-garde project?

A vast number of prevailing conceptions of the literary and artistic evolution of the 20th century agree that the notion of avant-garde is important but definitively historicized. But even (or especially) when speaking about the “longue durée” of the avant-garde, of the “aging” avant-garde or of the “arrière-garde”, there seems to be something irritating still today in the notion and in the project of the historical avant-garde. My investigation will take as starting point a remark by Luhmann, postulating that “The avant-garde only formulated the problem [the distinction of art and non-art] and put it into a form” (Die Kunst der Gesellschaft) and the observation that the avant-garde seems to be a phantom which also haunts literary and artistic theory as the conditions of aesthetic production today, perhaps more so in the arts than in literature. Consequently, I will be concerned with the question whether this postulate can be verified in today’s art and literature, to what extent the current discussion about modernism and avant-garde takes account of this presence of the avant-garde and if, nearly forty years after Peter Bürger’s, a new theory of the avant-garde is possible and necessary.