Thesis by Eva Kiesele
PhD dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 2023
This thesis explores rabbinic conceptions of language in context. It argues that late antique rab... more This thesis explores rabbinic conceptions of language in context. It argues that late antique rabbinic literature continues an older, "material" view of language, once widely shared among the cultures of Mediterranean antiquity. I highlight differences and contiguities with the Graeco-Roman philosophical tradition, in particular, several noteworthy contiguities with Stoic thought.
Articles by Eva Kiesele
TOPOI, special issue "Language and Worldviews: Ideas on Language Throughout the Ages" (eds. N. Gontier, D. Couto, M. Fontaine, L. Magnani, S. Arfini), 2022
Legal reasoning relies on language to ground the determinacy of the law. Jurists must thus confro... more Legal reasoning relies on language to ground the determinacy of the law. Jurists must thus confront language when it threatens to undermine the latter. Conversely, they may hold language to safeguard legal determinacy. Drawing on insights from legal theory, I turn to an unusual rabbinic rule of inference. Its earliest attested version suggests a universal possibility of inference “from the category of yes that of no, from the category of no that of yes.” I show that the ever-evolving uses of this rule allow us to observe a shift in linguistic attitude, increasingly acknowledging linguistic uncertainty. My findings tie in with recent advances in the study of rabbinic exegesis.
Studia Iranica 43 (2014), 177-202
This article presents a transcription, translation, commentary, and discussion of a ritual and th... more This article presents a transcription, translation, commentary, and discussion of a ritual and theological passage taken from the long-neglected Middle Persian work, the Zand ī fragard ī Jud-dēw-dād. The selection is notable for the way it mixes theological and ritual forms of discourse while considering situations in which impure or Evil things, like corpses, wolves, and sins, naturally come into contact with pure and Good elements, like water, fire, and good deeds. Along with explaining this rich text and its various textual parallels, the article considers the potential research value of the Zand ī fragard ī Jud-dēw-dād for Iranists and scholars of late antique religious literature.
Book Reviews by Eva Kiesele
The Marginalia Review of Books, 2014
The Marginalia Review of Books, 2013
Teaching Documents by Eva Kiesele
Interdisciplinary seminar at HUM 100 level, at a relaxed pace (Syllabus in German)
Freshmen seminar for an interdisciplinary program at Freie Universität Berlin.
Conferences Organized by Eva Kiesele
The conference will be streamed live. In order to attend, please register at https://userblogs.fu... more The conference will be streamed live. In order to attend, please register at https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/borrowed-worlds/ .
This conference ventures beyond the traditional purview of literary studies, seeking to highlight the ubiquity of ‘borrowings’ in literary production at all times and places. Recent decades have witnessed a surge of interest in all forms of literary, aesthetic, and cultural appropriation. Prone to eliciting normative responses, acts of appropriation have frequently been criticized either for insufficiently paying respect to collective identities not one’s own, or for the––tacit, surreptitious, or illegitimate––incorporation of material claimed as their own by others. At stake in these debates tends to be a failure to visibly mark off the appropriated as other. This failure is epitomized by the absence of the quotation mark. On closer inspection, however, the idea of appropriation appears to rely on presumptions of auctorial origin and proprietorship the universal validity of which can and must be questioned. Indeed, borrowing sans quotation mark appears to constitute an accepted norm, rather than exception, not only in some niches of contemporary culture (cover versions, stagings), but, more profoundly so, in numerous bodies of literature inside and outside the Western tradition. Our aim, then, is to explore, in systematic fashion, the ubiquity of literary appropriation across periods, languages, and cultures.
Our point of departure is the German term ‘Aneignung’ with its particular semantics encompassing aspects such as acquisition, appropriation, and learning. Thus, in referring to the acquisition of knowledge as ‘Aneignung’, German speakers describe a shared possession rather than state an exclusive claim. Similarly, we may adopt (‘zu eigen machen’) jokes, rumors, or legends, but not possess them. ‘Aneignung’, in short, highlights the multifaceted nature of practices of literary borrowing. Following these cues, we understand that oral and epistemic registers challenge the very idea of a ‘proprietor’ of the text. These registers open our eyes to the fact that there exists a whole gamut of varying degrees of proprietorship, whether of a personal-auctorial or of a collective nature. Oftentimes, the selfsame practices of imitation, adaptation, or reworking may be adjudicated rather differently when performed independently, or under the banner of tradition. Yet even in a culture of personal authorship, unmarked intertextual practices intent on obscuring, rather than highlighting their sources, may be perceived as a hallmark of artistic mastery and, in fact, of the literariness of a text. Other bodies of literature would seem to defy not only narrow notions of proprietorship but even the very confines of the text. Literatures such as those of the Romance Middle Ages or the many unauthored literatures of the premodern Middle East, thrive on the retelling, reworking, and rearrangement of extant material. Re-working, after all, presents one form of serious engagement with a text. It is in this vein that we contend that borrowed wor(l)ds are constitutive of literature itself.
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Thesis by Eva Kiesele
Articles by Eva Kiesele
Book Reviews by Eva Kiesele
Teaching Documents by Eva Kiesele
Conferences Organized by Eva Kiesele
This conference ventures beyond the traditional purview of literary studies, seeking to highlight the ubiquity of ‘borrowings’ in literary production at all times and places. Recent decades have witnessed a surge of interest in all forms of literary, aesthetic, and cultural appropriation. Prone to eliciting normative responses, acts of appropriation have frequently been criticized either for insufficiently paying respect to collective identities not one’s own, or for the––tacit, surreptitious, or illegitimate––incorporation of material claimed as their own by others. At stake in these debates tends to be a failure to visibly mark off the appropriated as other. This failure is epitomized by the absence of the quotation mark. On closer inspection, however, the idea of appropriation appears to rely on presumptions of auctorial origin and proprietorship the universal validity of which can and must be questioned. Indeed, borrowing sans quotation mark appears to constitute an accepted norm, rather than exception, not only in some niches of contemporary culture (cover versions, stagings), but, more profoundly so, in numerous bodies of literature inside and outside the Western tradition. Our aim, then, is to explore, in systematic fashion, the ubiquity of literary appropriation across periods, languages, and cultures.
Our point of departure is the German term ‘Aneignung’ with its particular semantics encompassing aspects such as acquisition, appropriation, and learning. Thus, in referring to the acquisition of knowledge as ‘Aneignung’, German speakers describe a shared possession rather than state an exclusive claim. Similarly, we may adopt (‘zu eigen machen’) jokes, rumors, or legends, but not possess them. ‘Aneignung’, in short, highlights the multifaceted nature of practices of literary borrowing. Following these cues, we understand that oral and epistemic registers challenge the very idea of a ‘proprietor’ of the text. These registers open our eyes to the fact that there exists a whole gamut of varying degrees of proprietorship, whether of a personal-auctorial or of a collective nature. Oftentimes, the selfsame practices of imitation, adaptation, or reworking may be adjudicated rather differently when performed independently, or under the banner of tradition. Yet even in a culture of personal authorship, unmarked intertextual practices intent on obscuring, rather than highlighting their sources, may be perceived as a hallmark of artistic mastery and, in fact, of the literariness of a text. Other bodies of literature would seem to defy not only narrow notions of proprietorship but even the very confines of the text. Literatures such as those of the Romance Middle Ages or the many unauthored literatures of the premodern Middle East, thrive on the retelling, reworking, and rearrangement of extant material. Re-working, after all, presents one form of serious engagement with a text. It is in this vein that we contend that borrowed wor(l)ds are constitutive of literature itself.
This conference ventures beyond the traditional purview of literary studies, seeking to highlight the ubiquity of ‘borrowings’ in literary production at all times and places. Recent decades have witnessed a surge of interest in all forms of literary, aesthetic, and cultural appropriation. Prone to eliciting normative responses, acts of appropriation have frequently been criticized either for insufficiently paying respect to collective identities not one’s own, or for the––tacit, surreptitious, or illegitimate––incorporation of material claimed as their own by others. At stake in these debates tends to be a failure to visibly mark off the appropriated as other. This failure is epitomized by the absence of the quotation mark. On closer inspection, however, the idea of appropriation appears to rely on presumptions of auctorial origin and proprietorship the universal validity of which can and must be questioned. Indeed, borrowing sans quotation mark appears to constitute an accepted norm, rather than exception, not only in some niches of contemporary culture (cover versions, stagings), but, more profoundly so, in numerous bodies of literature inside and outside the Western tradition. Our aim, then, is to explore, in systematic fashion, the ubiquity of literary appropriation across periods, languages, and cultures.
Our point of departure is the German term ‘Aneignung’ with its particular semantics encompassing aspects such as acquisition, appropriation, and learning. Thus, in referring to the acquisition of knowledge as ‘Aneignung’, German speakers describe a shared possession rather than state an exclusive claim. Similarly, we may adopt (‘zu eigen machen’) jokes, rumors, or legends, but not possess them. ‘Aneignung’, in short, highlights the multifaceted nature of practices of literary borrowing. Following these cues, we understand that oral and epistemic registers challenge the very idea of a ‘proprietor’ of the text. These registers open our eyes to the fact that there exists a whole gamut of varying degrees of proprietorship, whether of a personal-auctorial or of a collective nature. Oftentimes, the selfsame practices of imitation, adaptation, or reworking may be adjudicated rather differently when performed independently, or under the banner of tradition. Yet even in a culture of personal authorship, unmarked intertextual practices intent on obscuring, rather than highlighting their sources, may be perceived as a hallmark of artistic mastery and, in fact, of the literariness of a text. Other bodies of literature would seem to defy not only narrow notions of proprietorship but even the very confines of the text. Literatures such as those of the Romance Middle Ages or the many unauthored literatures of the premodern Middle East, thrive on the retelling, reworking, and rearrangement of extant material. Re-working, after all, presents one form of serious engagement with a text. It is in this vein that we contend that borrowed wor(l)ds are constitutive of literature itself.