Willi Goetschel - Heine and Critical Theory

To read what was never written can be a challenging task. Hugo von Hoffmannsthals enigmatically suggestive line gains particular salience when the blindness concerns the elephant in the room. Or a few elephants. For only death bound elephants travel alone. The others move together in formations or constellations similar to the movement of critical concerns whose freely roaming associations are not always easily compartmentalized.

Heine and his poignantly provocative writing represents the sort of elephant to which scholarshipand not just historians of Critical Theoryhave turned a blind eye. But avoiding the elephant has made the quarters only more cramped and led to the impediment of free critical movement that is Critical Theorys first and foremost concern. This is a concern that does not travel alone but moves in close association with questions such as Critical Theorys relationship to its various sources, including Jewish tradition, identity, and the German Jewish experience at home, abroad, and in exileissues that circle around the role of what can be called the role that Jewish difference plays in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School.

This book seeks to track the fundamental significance of these issues for a critical understanding of Critical Theory. It does so by attending to what I argue is a key link in the emergence of Critical Theory that helps rendering central issues legible that a selective scholarship has, over time, made hard to read, and so allows us to approach the question of the critical significance of Jewish difference unhampered by the disciplinary blindness that has marginalized Jewish Studies: with Jewish Studies, for its part, having assimilated the paradigm it once sought to challenge in the first place.

While it could be said that Critical Theory equals Heine without the humor, highlighting the critically reflective force that humor brings to the project of critique, Critical Theory can help track the critical thrust in Heine. To bring out this nexus, the book reads Heine with the Frankfurt School while highlighting the multiple reflections that Heine evokes in reading the Frankfurt School. But this is easier said then done. Exploring this relationship has become a project that commanded more time, more research, and more analysis than initially anticipatedbut in return it also yielded more than formerly expected. The journey of this book has been an experience that has lasted longer than anticipated and I owe thanks to all who so generously indulged me in what might have seemed an unending pursuit.