Vita
Joseph Vogl is Professor for Literature and Culture Theory (Kulturwissenschaft) at Humboldt University since 2006. He received his PhD in Modern German Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1990 and completed his habilitation in 2001. 1998 Josef Vogl joined Bauhaus University as a Professor for the Theory and History of Artificial Worlds, where he still is co-editor of the journal Archiv für Mediengeschichte. From 2005 to 2006, he was spokesman of the Graduate School Mediale Historiographien, Bauhaus-Universität. From, 2006 to 2007, he was spokesman of the Graduate School Codierung von Gewalt im medialen Wandel at Humboldt Universität. Since June 2008, Joseph Vogl is the director of the international graduate program Das Wissen der Literatur. He was visiting fellow at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna from 2001 to 2002. Since 2007, he is Permanent Visiting Professor at the Department of German at Princeton University.
Dated from 2011
Fields of research
History and theory of knowledge; history of danger in modern times; media and discourse theory; history of literature, 18th – 20th century.
IKKM Research Project
From the 16th century news of a special form of violence began to reach Europe from Indonesia and Malaysia, contained in the term amok (Malay: amuk = furious, raging). The history of this import covers a number of distinctive phases, and documents how ‘amok’ went from an exotic martial tactic to a psychiatric incident, eventually coming to signify, from the 20th century onwards, a diffuse social threat emanating from the centre of Western cultures. The example of the ‘running amok’ phenomenon enables us to delineate – right up to the most recent school massacres – the history of a sense of danger which relates to ‘dangerous individuals’ and declarations of hostility, an economy of violence, and its public processing in modern and contemporary societies. The observation of these spectacular acts of violence also sheds light on the way the cohesion and the predetermined breaking points of social and political orders have been arranged.
Publications
with Alexander Kluge: Soll und Haben. Fernsehgespräche. Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes 2008.
with Sabine Schimma (eds.): Versuchsanordnungen 1800. Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes, 2008.
Für alle und keinen. Lektüre, Schrift und Leben bei Nietzsche und Kafka. Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes 2008.
with Anne von der Heiden (ed.): Politische Zoologie. Berlin: Diaphanes 2007.
Über das Zaudern. Berlin: Diaphanes 2007 (2nd edit. 2008).
"Robuste und idiosynkratische Theorie". In: KulturPoetik (7/2) 2007, p. 249-258.
"Was ist ein Ereignis?" In: Peter Gente and Peter Weibel (eds.): Deleuze und die Künste. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 2007, p. 67-83.
Kalkül und Leidenschaft. Poetik des ökonomischen Menschen. München: Sequenzia Verlag 2002 (2nd edit.: Zürich und Berlin 2004; 3rd edit. 2008).
Gesetz und Urteil. Beiträge zu einer Theorie des Politischen. Weimar: VDG 2003.
with Bernhard Siegert (eds.): Europa: Kultur der Sekretäre. Zürich und Berlin: Diaphanes 2003.
(ed.): Poetologien des Wissens um 1800. München: Fink 1999.
with Wolfgang Schäffner (eds.): Michel Foucault. Herculine Barbin. Über Hermaphrodismus. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1997.
with Friedrich Balke (eds.): Gilles Deleuze. Fluchtlinien der Philosophie. München: Fink 1996.
(ed.): Gemeinschaften. Positionen zu einer Philosophie des Politischen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1994.
Ort der Gewalt. Kafkas literarische Ethik. Fink: München 1990.