Felix Trautmann
Frankfurt am Main
Host: Anja Lemke
Direktorin Auerbach-Institut
Forschungsprojekt
Democratic Realism. Unfolding Equality and the Demand of the Impossible
In most liberal political theories equality is conceived as a fundamental norm that ideally orients processes of social reproduction. The aesthetic and political perspective known as realism can be interpreted to offer a different take: instead of a normative approach to equality realism tries to effectively uncover relations of equality in the materiality of the lives of those exposed to and subjected by the different forms of (brute) inequality. It does so by unfolding and exploring the reality of these lives, their everyday experiences and common culture.
By following the realist approach, this project offers to gain a new perspective on contemporary struggles against the unequal valuation of lives within modern, even democratic societies. It does so by merging three different notions of realism: first, as an aesthetic understanding of equality in the tradition of the arts, literature and film that make use of documentary methods, ethnographic and archival counter-investigations. Second, as a political perspective on power relations and political contestations that does not refer solely to the false or incomplete implementation of the juridically determined norm of equality, but rather produces a different description of the reality of failed norms and therefore allows for a more radical critique. Third, as a utopian stance that envisions equality by way of demanding the impossible, opening up processes of social transformation beyond mere technocratic reforms.
Felix Trautmann
Vita
Felix Trautmann is a postdoc researcher at the Institute for Social Research Frankfurt. In his research he is interested in democratic struggles, in particular processes of social transformation through cultural politics. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including most recently: Das Imaginäre der Demokratie. Politische Befreiung und das Rätsel der freiwilligen Knechtschaft (konstanz university press 2020). His research has been awarded the Werner Pünder Preis 2016 and was supported by several fellowships (DAAD, Deutsch-Französische Hochschule, Volkswagenstiftung, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds, etc.). During his time at the Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies he will continue working on his next major book on Democratic Realism, an interdisciplinary study on the question of equality.
Forschungsschwerpunkt
- Aesthetic Theory
- Political and Social Philosophy
- Democracy
- Cultural Politics
- History of political Ideas
Publikationen (Auswahl)
Books
- Das Imaginäre der Demokratie. Politische Befreiung und das Rätsel der freiwilligen Knechtschaft (Konstanz: konstanz university press 2020)
- Partage. Zur Figurierung politischer Zugehörigkeit in der Moderne (Marburg: Tectum 2010)
Edited books
- Étienne de La Boétie: De la servitude volontaire / Von der freiwilligen Knechtschaft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2022)
- Normative Paradoxien. Verkehrungen des gesellschaftlichen Fortschritts (Frankfurt am Main: Campus 2021) (ed. with Axel Honneth, Kai-Olaf Maiwald und Sarah Speck)
- »We protect you from yourselves«. The Politics of Policing (Madrid: brumaria 2018)
(ed. with Democracia)
- Alexis de Tocqueville und die Paradoxien der Gleichheit (ed. with Axel Honneth, Judith Mohrmann und Juliane Rebentisch), in: WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Heft 1, Jg. 14.
- Das politische Imaginäre. Freiheit und Gesetz V (Berlin: August Verlag 2017).
Articles
- »Zerstreute Versprechen. Siegfried Kracauer und die paradoxe Verkehrung der Massenkultur«, in: Axel Honneth et al. (eds.): Normative Paradoxien. Verkehrungen des gesellschaftlichen Fortschritts (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 2021).
- »Die Gemeinschaft und das Politische«, in: Alfred Schäfer und Christiane Thompson (eds.): Gemeinschaft, (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2018).
- »Die demokratische Gesellschaft ist keine Gesellschaft von Singularitäten« (2017, book forum on Andreas Reckwitz’ Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten), www.soziopolis.de (Link: www.soziopolis.de/die-gesellschaft-der-singularitaeten-5/buchforum-reckwitz-buchforum.html)
- »Zerrbilder der Gleichheit. Demokratie und Massenkultur nach Tocqueville« (with Juliane Rebentisch), in: WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Heft 1, Jg. 14, 2017.
- »Anthropologie moralischer Ökonomien. Ein Porträt Didier Fassins anlässlich der Adorno-Vorlesungen 2016«, in: WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Heft 1, Jg. 14, 2017.
- »Das Verschwinden des Erscheinens. Die ‚unsichtbare Ideologie‘ der Postdemokratie«, in: Gerhard Unterthurner, Thomas Hübel, Andreas Hetzel (eds.), Postdemokratie und die Verleugnung des Politischen (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2015).