Pathos, Schock, Trauma: Psychologische Konzepte in einigen Poetiken der Avantgarde (Ėjzenštejn, Warburg, Benjamin) frontmatter Erik Martin Die Welt der Slaven, Jahrgang 68 (2023), Ausgabe 2, Seite 394 - 404 The present article aims at conceptualizing the relationship between availability and unavailability of poetic and aesthetic means of expression in the production of avant-garde art. This relationship will be introduced and analysed based on the three title terms: pathos, shock, trauma. As it seems, the avant-garde was characterized by a fundamental ambivalence: On the one hand, it was inscribed in the empowerment discourse of Modernity and believed that it could also control the conditions of its own art production. On the other hand, it was the avant-garde in particular that emphasized the independent potentiality of the material itself, which was removed from the artist’s control and could nonetheless make a decisive contribution to the creative process. This ambivalence between the total subjugation of the material to the artist’s will to form and the potentiality of the resisting material or the fundamental unavailability of art’s own conditions will be examined on the basis of three representatives of the avant-garde: Sergej Ėjzenštejn, Aby Warburg, and Walter Benjamin.
Anarchism and art. The political roots of Šklovskij ’s concept of estrangement article Erik Martin, Annette Werberger Die Welt der Slaven, Jahrgang 66 (2021), Ausgabe 1, Seite 130 - 140 The aim of this article is to outline some connections between Šklovskij’s theory of estrangement (ostranenie) and certain anarchist ideas of the 19th century. At first glance this purpose might seem rather far-fetched. However, we will argue that the excessive use of quotations from Tolstoj that Šklovskij makes in his seminal work on estrangement – namely Art as Device (Iskusstvo kak priem, 1917) – is more than a mere coincidence. Via Tolstoj, Šklovskij could have received important anarchist ideas on the non-representational (or non-mimetic) character of art, which to a certain degree might have prefigured some corresponding concepts of the avant-garde movements. In order to illustrate this outlined connection, we will proceed in two steps. Firstly, we will recapitulate some well-known ideas on certain anarchist traits of the avant-garde, especially regarding the way aesthetic and political questions seem to merge in its anarchist praxis. Secondly, we will trace back the connection between estrangement and anti-representation in the ethics and aesthetics of anarchism in the 19th century, especially via Šklovskij’s reading of Tolstoj.The article is written in English.
