Is the monstrous the truth of any playfulness? Or is it even its condition? Its secret power? This thematic project will address the issue of play as an aesthetic comportment as derived from Friedrich Schiller’s theory (and recently taken up again by Jacques Ranciere’s notion of the asthetic regime.) However, rather than focus on the textual-conceptual interpretation alone, we will investigate the monstrous as the spectral double or even condition of play. Our starting point will be Schiller – not his theoretical writings, but his plays.

The monstrous, originally an element of the sublime, comes to its own in Edmund Burke’s political critique of the French Revolution. Later, it leads a spectral life and a life as specter in the aesthetic-politial and aesthetic-ethical realm. We will trace this double figure of the monstrous and play. The notion of beauty (and the good) will be discussed from a psychoanlytic point of view as a screen defending against the insight into the Real of the monstrous. This will be paralleled with a discussion of sado-masochism in literature and film.

The seminar will include public presentations by Ulf Aminde (artist), Brock Enright (artist), and Marcus Coelen (cultural theorist and psychoanalyst).

A thematic project by Felix Ensslin (Dec 2008-March 2009)