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This article argues that the works of Ludwig Tieck—specifically the fairy tales collected in Phantasus—and the poems of Friedrich Hölderlin operate according to an aesthetics of impotentiation. Impotentiation designates the coexistence of seemingly opposed operations: on the one hand, the generation of forms that can be developed further in unexpected directions; and on the other hand, impotence, a condition whereby processes of emergence are brought to a standstill. The works of Tieck and Hölderlin draw on these operations to imbue sites of deviant emergence with uncertainty, albeit directed toward different ends. Tieck dramatizes the shifting of states in which everyday forms of intelligibility are briefly suspended, thereby allowing individuals to explore alternative forms of being, some of which are transgressive, some of which are redemptive, if but for a short while; his tales gesture at impotent forms not capable of development, but nevertheless invested with a critical force over and against problematic reality. Hölderlin situates his poetic voice on the cusp of an emergent order that would entail a revolutionary suspension of cultural norms; poised between the possibility of renewal and the danger of annihilation, his poetry invests such inflection points with an increased sense of urgency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches the concept of the absolute operative in Goethe'sFaustby taking its point of departure from Schelling'sNaturphilosophie, which supersedes and embeds tragic subjectivity in an ontological dynamic that both grounds and exceeds the subjective. The essential operations of such an absolute manifest themselves in the tensions and inconsistencies generated by dynamic forces—attraction and repulsion, contraction and expansion—that move through all appearances, whether material, psychic, or discursive. Because a chaotic reserve of disorder belongs intrinsically to the unfolding of the absolute ofNaturphilosophie, absolute signification in Faust manifests itself primarily in the shape of aberrant destinies. Moreover, the transcendental and textual dynamics of attraction and repulsion produce operations ofunconditioning(from the “conditionlessness” of the absolute,das Unbedingte) such that no singular phenomenon or individuated being can become a prioritized representative of the absolute. This article thus attempts to “uncondition” Faustian striving by drawing attention to alternative models of absolute signification in the text—for example, to Homunculus (the absolute as disindividuation), Euphorion (hyperindividuation), Gretchen (heteronomous-ethical individuation), or Mephistopheles (the negation of individuation)—each of whom are differentiated but nevertheless share the dynamic of forces of attraction and repulsion through which the movement of the absolute discloses itself. Finally, the paper seeks to “uncondition” the Eternal Feminine—itself an inconsistent, queer manifestation of the absolute (since it operates not just on male subjects, but on female subjects and angels that perturb sexual differentiation)—and open the path to anexteriorityto the narrative of redemption, one that calls into question the Eternal Feminine as a full, adequate representation of the textual cosmology ofFaust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the emergence of discourses in the eighteenth century in which disequilibrium appears not as an aberration-a perturbation later attenuated by some future well-ordered state-but as a source of affirmation in and of itself. The article focuses on specific paradigmatic snapshots that ascribe a certain value to disequilibrium: William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, Schiller's Anmuth und Würde, Schelling's early philosophy of nature, and the Homunculus episode of Faust II. These texts frame affirmative disequilibrium in different modes: as a perceptual technology (aesthetic disequilibrium), as a way of being in the world (ethical disequilibrium), or as a basic structure of givenness (ontological disequilibrium). Each instance of affirmative disequilibrium makes possible a form of thought in which disruption, disjunction, or deviance constitutes the condition of possibility of the author's respective investments, whether in an aesthetics of stimulation (Hogarth), an ethics of sovereignty (Schiller), or an ontology of agonistic forces that frames systemic inconsistency as a source of affirmative potentiality (Schelling). An epilogue on the Homunculus episode of Goethe's Faust II shows how the text imaginatively engages with non-teleological, chaotic liquidity as a generative matrix of forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]