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Just Language revisits the Weimar period and its representation in the postwar years to explore narratives of linguistic resistance in the works of Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan. How did this generation of exile writers grapple with their experiences of oppression and persecution? How did they create a language of resistance during the decades that prepared the Third Reich and the Shoah? Facing the devastations of World War I, the book explores how Walter Benjamin analyzed language’s ability to radically break the cyclical violence of war and examines his opposition to expansionism and imperialism in Weimar education and culture. Based on Benjamin’s analysis, Johannßen traces the postwar responses of Hannah Arendt and Paul Celan. While Arendt proposed strategies of metaphorical thinking to counteract the formation of totalitarianism, Celan mobilized silence as a poetic counterforce against oppression and erasure. Just Language argues that every linguistic act and practice, no matter how small or marginalized, entails the ethical task of opposing the normalization and institutionalization of political violence. By tracing how Benjamin and his interlocutors struggled against German fascism, Johannßen presents a memory-based critique of linguistic violence, opening a dialogue between German-Jewish writers and today’s debates on nondiscrimination, propaganda, and social justice.
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Keywords
- antiracism
- Bertolt Brecht
- Critical theory
- Decolonization
- Deconstruction
- Discrimination
- Education
- Fascism
- Frankfurt School
- Freedom of speech
- German colonialism
- Hannah Arendt
- Hate speech
- Institute of Social Research
- Judith Butler
- Language
- language learning
- Linguistic
- metaphors
- Multilingualism
- Nondiscrimination
- Nonviolence
- Opposition
- Paul Celan
- Poetry
- Politics
- Propaganda
- Representation
- Resistance
- silence
- Social change
- Social Justice
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPA Political science and theory
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
- theodor w. adorno
- Totalitarianism
- Violence
- Walter Benjamin
- Weimar Republic
- Werner Hamacher
Links
DOI: 10.3998/mpub.14613105Editions