Vita
Christine Blaettler has been professor for Philosophy of Science at the Philosophy Department of Kiel University since 2011. After Studying Philosophy and Slavonic Literatures and Languages she recieved her PhD in Philosophy at Berne University for her dissertation titled „Delikt: Extremer Realismus“, her venia legendi in Philosophy at Potsdam University for her habilitation on seriality. She has been a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna, at the Philosophy Department of Stanford University, and at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin. She is a co-founder and currently board member of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft.
Dated from 2017
Fields of research
Culture and technology, culture and knowledge, philosophy of history, seriality, modelling, fetishism.
IKKM Research Project
Frills Matter
The frill, this subtle fabric decoration of plicated tissue, is out of sight between the proverbial low-cost no-frills and excessive romantic looks. But it is just this futile and frivolous detail, so obviously useless and purely decorative that quasi en passant offers a specific emphasis. Situated on a gown swinging by it attracts the gaze, charges it with an erotic moment or provides irritation drawing attention to it. The frill is not only an everyday and material object but also an especially contingent yet ephemeral item. In exploring the frill’s diminutive charm the project seeks to investigate its larger contexts and specific tensions. Here the frill exposes that it is not at all a negligible quantity but can assign philosophy to think beyond the exclusive realm of mind and essence, ultimate purpose and eternity. The frill is material and has a specific shape, stringing together one fold after the other, and densifying it towards a figure: the shape of the frill shows the pattern of a series. Constituted by a series of folds the frill is in itself a segmented figure that expresses the law of repetition. An investigation of the frill does not start from a theory obliged to identity or difference, although they serve further reflection. However the frill demonstrates manifestly, that its folds are neither ideal nor standardized or fix, that they do not obey any archetype, but rather step out of line. The project’s interest in the frill focuses on the relation between seriality and matter and how these operations can inform philosophy. One approach might be a bottom up aesthetics, building on sensual perception based on a material detail. Epistemologically the question thus becomes not only about the particular “Zeitkern” – the temporal-core (Benjamin) – of truth claims, but about the historical specific bodies and dresses that make up the “naked truth.”
Recent Publications
Forthcoming
Walter Benjamin. Politisches Denken (co-editor), Baden-Baden 2016.
Gezügelter Luxus, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 4/2016.
Heideggers Technikbegriff und der verstellte Blick auf die Oekonomie, in: Navigationen 2/2016.
Austreibung der Schatten? Die fröhliche Wissenschaft gegen ihre neuen Bewunderer verteidigt, in: Conatus und Lebensnot. Medienanthropologische Konzepte des Überlebens, hg. v. Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky/Anna Tuschling, Wien/Berlin 2016.
Published
Ewiger Prometheus, lange Schatten Gottes und die Listen der List. Zu mythologischen, eschatologischen und formalen Szenarien moderner Technik, Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie 2016.
‚Chemie der Begriffe’ und ‚historischer Sinn’. Überlegungen zur philosophischen Begriffsbildung, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 38 (2015).
In Gegenwart des Fetischs. Dingkonjunktur und Fetischbegriff in der Diskussion (co-editor), Wien/Berlin 2014.
List der Technik, Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 2/2013;
Social Dissatisfaction and Social Change, in: Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy, hg. v. Allen W. Wood/Songsuk Susan Hahn, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press 2012;
Kunst der Serie. Die Serie in den Künsten (Hg.), München 2010.