Sigrid Weigel
Sigrid Weigel was director of the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) in Berlin, Professor for literature at the TU Berlin, both 1999-2015, and was a Permanent Visiting Faculty Member of the German Department form 2005-2016. She studied German Literature and Political Science at Hamburg University (promotion 1977) and habilitated in 1986 at Marburg University. She taught as Professor at Hamburg and Zürich, served as member of the directorial board of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Institut (Essen) and as director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. She stayed as visiting scholar at numerous universities in Europe and the US (e.g. Basel, Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford), is honorary member of the MLA, honorary president of the International Walter Benjamin Association (IWBA), member of the Academia Europaea, awardee of the Aby Warburg-Price, and holds honorary doctorates of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the UNSAM Buenos Aires, and the State University of Tbilisi.
Her research is dedicated to literature, its relation to intellectual and cultural history, and its epistemological contribution to science studies. Her early research focused on non-canonical genres (pamphlets in 1848, prisoner’s literature) and on gender and literature. She introduced the concept of the Erste Kulturwissenschaft (First Culture Science) around 1900 and is specialist of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, Sigmund Freud, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Heine, Susan Taubes, and Ingeborg Bachmann. In addition, her work comprises research on theory and history of memory (post-holocaust, psychoanalyses), dialectics of secularization, afterlife of religion in modernity, image theory, and cultural approaches to science studies (esp. inheritance, genealogy, plastic surgery, facial expression, digital culture).
Her numerous monographs include Topographien der Geschlechter (1990), Ingeborg Bachmann. Hinterlassenschaften unter Wahrung des Briefgeheimnisses (1999), two books on Walter Benjamin (1997, 2008) with translations into Spanish, Italian, French and English: Body- and Image Space. Re-Reading Walter Benjamin (1996) and Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy (2013); Literatur als Voraussetzung der Kulturgeschichte. Schauplätze von Shakespeare bis Benjamin (2004); Genea-Logik. Generation, Tradition und Evolution zwischen Kultur- und Naturwissenschaften (München 2006), Grammatologie der Bilder (2015, forthcoming as Grammatology of Images. A History of the A-Visible in 2022), Transnational Foreign Policy – Beyond National Culture (2019).
She is editor of Aby Warburg’s Schriften in einem Band (2010), Stéphane Mosès’ Momentaufnahmen – Instantanès (2010), Susan Taubes’ Schriften (2011 ff.), and Gershom Scholem’s Poetica (2019)
The most important titles of her numerous edited/co-edited volumes are: Leib- und Bildraum. Lektüren nach Benjamin (ed. 1992), Flaschenpost und Postkarte. Korrespondenzen zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Poststrukturalismus (ed. 1995), Das Geschlecht der Künste (co-ed. 1996), Trauma. Zwischen Psychoanalyse und kulturellem Deutungsmuster (co-ed. 1999), Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Stimme (co-ed. 2002), „Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail“. Mikrostrukturen des Wissens (co-ed. 2003), Märtyrer-Portraits. Von Opfertod, Blutzeugen und heiligen Kriegern (ed. 2007), WissensKünste. Das Wissen der Künste und die Kunst des Wissens (co.-ed. 2011), “Escape to Life”. German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933 (co-ed. 2012), Grundordnungen. Geographie, Religion, Gesetz (co-ed. 2013), Gesichter. Kulturgeschichtliche Szenen aus der Arbeit am Bildnis des Menschen (ed. 2013), A Neuro-Psychoanalytical Dialogue for Bridging Freud and the Neurosciences (co-ed. 2016), Empathy: Epistemic Problems and Cultural-Historical Perspectives (co-ed. 2017), Testimony/ Bearing Witness. Epistemology, Ethics, History and Culture (co-ed. 2017).
