Four-hour workshop in the Spring program series Philosophy, Formalization & Truth as Creative Process at the Parrhesia: School of Philosophy, Berlin e.V.
Biography is a very old and still immensely popular genre. We find biographies of politicians, artists, revolutionaries, entrepreneurs and poets, and even of things, rivers and cities on the market today. For a long time, biographies were held to have a rather conservative reputation: they seemed to reproduce the ideological outlook according to which history is made by great men, thus enabling history to be written as the history of these great men. But this reputation got turned around for emancipatory purposes a good while ago: in the abolitionist, workers’ and women’s movements, biographies were written of people who were said to have no real history of their own. And, of course, the lives and histories of the leaders of these movements also became subjects of biographical encounters. This turning around raises difficult questions: for example, is it possible to write the biography of Karl Marx without reproducing the stereotype of the great man, and if so, how? Here, the political question becomes a poetic one, in the literal sense: it is a question of how to do it, of how to write a biography that, at a certain point, has to turn against conventions of its own genre.
After a brief historical introduction to biography, the workshop will address, in a first section, some general problems of biography writing. Then, in a second section, we will discuss particular problems regarding the cases of Marx and Lukács, drawing on Michael Heinrich’s biography of Marx, and Patrick Eiden-Offe’s work in progress on the life of Georg Lukács. Biography is a very old and still immensely popular genre: We can find biographies of politicians, artists, revolutionaries, entrepreneurs, poets, but also of things, rivers, or cities on the market today. For a long time, biographies enjoyed a rather conservative reputation: They seemed to reproduce the ideological outlook that history is made by great man, so that history can be written as the history of these great men. But this reputation has also been turned around for emancipatory purposes for a long time now: in the abolitionist, the workers’, or the women’s movements, biographies of people were written down who were said to have no real history of their own. And of course, also the lifes and histories of the leaders of these movements became subjects of biographical encounters. This raises difficult questions: Is it, and how is it, possible to write, for example, the biography of Karl Marx without reproducing the stereotype of the great man? Here, the political question turns into a poetical one in the literal sense: a question of how to do it, of how to write such a biography that at a certain point hat to turn itself against certain convention of its own genre.
In our workshop, we will read and discuss examples from the genre’s history. And we will present and discuss examples and extracts from our own biographical, politico-poetical enterprises: Michael Heinrich from his Marx-Biography, Patrick Eiden-Offe from his project of writing a biography of Georg Lukács.
Michael Heinrich is a German historian of philosophy, political scientist and mathematician, specialising in the critical study of the development of Marx’s thought. His work is characterized by its focus on the points of ambivalence and inconsistency in Marx.