dear livejournal genie

[lapsedmodernist]

Does anyone know if in German philosophy there was ever a specific term for something like "being in history" or "history-in-progress"--either referring to subject positionality in history, or the process of history unfolding? I feel like maybe never_the_less or maybe nightspore would know?..

ETA: NOT Dasein.

Comments

[tomorrow-devil.livejournal.com]

you said "NOT Dasein,"
and since Dasein is historicizing being,
you might be meaning something like a subject that is history unfolding. I think. Not a catalyst, not an antagonistic resistor, but an agonist with history. You don't need Heidegger, you need Nietzsche, I think. Maybe his "On the Utility and Liability for History for Life". But maybe you don't need a German, maybe a subject that is an agonist with history is what Foucault was talking about when he got down to discussing disciplinarity in "The Subject and Power"? Maybe Elizabeth Grosz can help, and having said that maybe even Darwin can - in fact I'm sure Darwin can be inspirational if read with the right mindset (again EG can help). But I doubt you're looking for anything so (generally) creepy to cultural theory. Historically agonistic subjectivity might be excavated up from Saba Mahmood's book about suffering, or one of the Marxist-leaning Sci Studies people.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, Foucault is tempting because where I am starting with this lacunae, it ends with De Certeau, so it's really about plurotpic history and all kinds of fluidity about being a subject in history/subject constructed by history/subject constructing history, heterodox agency, etc. I haven't thought of Foucault for this because I started thinking about the Germans immediately...thanks for the ideas! Are you at the AAAs?

[tomorrow-devil.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I've been working very hard to be less flippant and more helpful these days.

No AAAs for me. (Ever???)

I'm in Delhi, stuck on a rooftop in Monkeyland.

Which come to think of it, is a very good title.

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I am no expert, but do you just mean Hegel's teleological conception of history -- and the unfolding of Geist? (spirit) That would definitely be more history unfolding than subject positionality in history. I don't know of anything in particular, but the groundwork for German ideas about history is definitely laid between Kant (see Idea of a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, or something like that) and Hegel (Phenom. of Spirit, but also Lectures on the Philosophy of History, which is short and actually readable). By the time you get to Nietzsche with the Use and Abuse essay, Germany is already swept up in the throws of historicism, and Nietzsche is really reacting to that, not nec. pioneering a totally new idea about history out of the blue, imo.

But I don't know of specific terms that come out of these things at all...but yeah, I am definitely no expert!

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

What s/he says. Hegel in particular. The process of Aufhebung. Maybe something in the Master/Slave section of the Phenomenology would be helpful. But what's a sentence you want to put this noun into?

[theophile.livejournal.com]

the closest I can come up with would be Hegel's "ursprüngliche Geschichte" ("original history") which was his categorization, basically, of primary sources in considering history. his usage of the term captures some of the flavor of what's being asked-- the meeting point between the individual and the grander historical narrative, with an emphasis on the subjective interpretation of unfolding history-- but is ultimately a retroactive description rather than a commentary on a state of being. Heidegger picked up the term and used it (as "ursprüngliche Geschichte schlechthin," or "absolutely originary history") as (and I am copying the following phrase from a Google search result, this is not the sort of phrase I can or would want to construct on my own) "the fundamental temporality of being and event of existence (Dasein)."

which is, through its own convoluted lineage, in the context of Sein und Zeit, exactly what you seem to be asking about. I believe you crave a compound word, though, with which I cannot help you.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

the meeting point between the individual and the grander historical narrative

yes, that is what I kind of want to get at, but it seems like Hegel put a more ontological spin on it, whereas I want a more phenomenological flavor. Don't you know enough German or at least enough about German to make compound words?