The Scene of Writing, Non-Writing

Uli Plass and Arne Höcker organized two panels on “The Scene of Writing, Non-Writing” at last week’s Conference of the German Studies Association in Oakland. The panels examined the “scene of writing, non-writing” as the writing scene that constitutes the law of modern literature insofar as it refers to a crisis of writing in which questions of authorship and subjectivity return to the foreground. Arne Höcker’s talk focused on Adalbert von Chamisso’s 1814 novella of Peter Schlemihl (the man who sold his shadow); Uli Plass discussed the two recent books by Rainald Goetz (“Klage” and “Loslabern”).