Prof. Dr. Susanne Strätling
Curriculum
Susanne Strätling is Professor of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin since 2020; previously, she taught at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Konstanz, LMU Munich, and the University of Potsdam. Her research focuses on literature and the media, rhetoric, and poetic materialities.
Publications (selection)
- Biophilology and the Metabolism of Literature. In: Life after Literature. Perspectives of Biopoetics in Literature and Theory. Ed. by Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó et al. Heidelberg 2020, pp. 261-278.
- Die Hand am Werk. Poetik der Poiesis in der russischen Avantgarde. Wilhelm Fink Verlag. München 2017.
- Kraftfelder der Wahrnehmung. Impressionismus und Energetik. In: Impressionismus in Russland. Aufbruch zur Avantgarde. Ausstellungskatalog hg. von Ortrud Westheider, Michael Philipp und Henning Schaper. München 2020, pp. 54-63. [Engl. Übers.: Perceptual Force Fields. Impressionism and Energetics. In: Impressionism in Russia. Dawn of The Avant-Garde. Exhibition catalogue ed. by Ortrud Westheider, Michael Philipp, and Henning Schaper. Munich 2020, pp. 52-63].
- Moisej Ginzburg: Der Rhythmus in der Architektur. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Nachwort von Thomas Flierl und Susanne Strätling. Leipzig 2021.
- Sprachenergie/Medienenergie. In: Sprachmedialität. Verflechtungen von Sprach- und Medienbegriffen. Hg. v. Hajnalka Halasz und Csongor Lőrincz. Bielefeld 2019, pp. 159-181.
Research project: Raw Materials. Resources of Poetics
The project takes the traditional suspicion of material as a starting point for its rediscovery under new omens: as "Rohstoff" (raw material). In modernity, the classical assumption that the form-drive triumphs over the sense-drive breaks down against the forces of a poetics that increasingly relies on concepts of resource, materiality, and also energy. In the process, it is not only the established logic of refining (or spiritualizing) the sensuous material into form that comes into crisis. At the same time, the evolution of a literature of raw materials opens up views of poetics that are increasingly characterized by reflections on labor, economy, and ecology. The project traces this development from the avant-garde discovery of a literature of raw facts and their processing at literary factories to the most recent developments of a biopoetics. Along the way, it becomes apparent that "Rohstoff" (raw material) is increasingly giving way to a new aesthetic rival: "Kunststoff" (synthetic material).
Research results: Raw Materials. Resources of Poetics
The time of the fellowship was devoted to work on a monograph on "Raw Materials. Resources of Poetics". The context of the Hamburg DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies offered impulses with regard to (1) the reflection of concepts of substance and form in the light of concepts of force, (2) ideas of aesthetics work under the perspective of force, and (3) the challenge of the epistemic functions of the concept of force. With regard to these three aspects, the centre’s focus on imaginaries of force opened up a wide-ranging horizon of discussion that made it possible to go beyond definitional fixations and open up the deep space of aesthetic and scholarly reflections on phenomena of liveliness, movement, dynamics, corporeality, (inter)mediality, and sociality.