| My dissertation "Bildung" and Rebellion. Youth in German Literary and Philosophical Texts from Johann G. Herder to Friedrich Nietzsche concerns itself with questions of ideology, subject formation, as well as theories of literary production and history. In it I trace the revaluation of youth in 18th and 19th century German literature and philosophy and discuss it in relation to theories of genius and originality in the texts of Herder, Goethe and Nietzsche. My dissertation is motivated by the desire to explore youth as a literary, cultural and philosophical concept, rather than as a biologically determined period of life. My readings of these literary and philosophical texts consider youth as a response to the crisis imposed by the political and social changes of modernity, the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalist bourgeoisie. Youth comes to the fore as the problem of becoming a subject, and the question of what type of processes subject formation entails, how subject formation fails and results in forms of rebellion. Within the German sociopolitical context of this time youth relates to discussions of how to become a nation, form a Nationalliteratur, and create a national public sphere or Offentlichkeit. I read literature's preoccupation with youth in connection to concepts of genius and originality that signal the creation of a phantasm, the possibility of creating something "new" and "original". |
