German Studies Lecture Series: The Virtual, the Actual, and the Real

Speaker: Jan Soeffner

Things are getting more and more unreal. Fact-checking can barely dissimulate the decline of a shared political reality; the economy virtualizes assets and currencies; formerly realist market participants are simulated and manipulated by behavioral prediction; avatars help users find ‘truer’ selves than they would in real life; user-interfaces make us interact with interlocutors who do not exist as humans; the automation of intelligence is beginning to emancipate knowledge from realist subjects…

To understand the overarching “uncanny valley” that this de-realizing of reality leaves behind, my talk examines it from the vantage point of two centuries ago. It draws on Goethe’s Faust I, a drama that reflects two decisive thresholds in the development of modern realism: the renaissance setting superimposed by the time of origin of the play (1772-1808). From his opening monologue on, Faust goes against the realist grain. He turns to a) the seemingly outdated order of renaissance Natural Magic (merged with 18th century esotericism) and b) an even more outdated realm of the deed “Tat”, that can best be understood against a medieval background. The tragedy thereby triangulates modern Reality with Virtuality and Actuality. My talk traces this triangulation and pushes it towards the analysis of our unreal reality.

RSVP