Vivian Liska on 'German Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy.”

The Religion and Literature Club presents Vivian Liska on 'German Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy.” Prof. Liska will be discussing her recent book, focussing on the chapter regarding Franz Kafka. Abstract: References to the law pervade Kafka’s writings, but their meaning remains elusive. It is precisely because it is uncertain whether the law in Kafka’s work is to be understood in juridical, religious, literary, or more generally ontological terms that it has elicited numerous and often contradictory interpretations that shed light on the relationship between these different realms. The lecture will explore how this indeterminacy and its effects have inspired important debates between modernist thinkers from Scholem and Benjamin to Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. The talk will focus on the relationship between law and narrative and its correlation with Jewish approaches to the interaction between Halacha and Aggadah. Vivian Liska is Professor of German literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is also, since 2013, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Her research focuses on modernist literature, German-Jewish literature and thought, and literary theory. She is the editor of the De Gruyter book series “Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts,” of the Yearbook of the Association of European-Jewish Literature, of the comparative literature journal arcadia and of numerous books, among them the two volume ICLA publication 'Modernism and What does the Veil Know?' In 2011 she was awarded the Cross of Honor of the Republic of Austria for Science and the Arts. Vivian Liska is the author of several monographs, among them Die Nacht der Hymnen (on Paul Celan), ‘Die Moderne – ein Weib’ (on Turn of the Century German women novelists), Das schelmische Erhabene (on Else Lasker-Schüler), Giorgio Agambens Leerer Messianismus (translated into Hebrew as אגמבן 'ורג'יוג  של הריקה המשיחיות); When Kafka Says We (translated into German as Fremde Gemeinschaft. Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne and soon in Hebrew translation with Hakobbutz Hameuchad.) Her most recent book: 'German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy' (2017).