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The paper reads Alfred Döblin’s novel Amazonas (1937/1938) in the context of current debates about world literature. It argues that these debates not only refer to a certain group of texts or to a literary system, but concern problems of reading and representation, namely how to read literature beyond the paradigms of national and comparative literature and how to represent a world, especially the modern globalized and secularized world. Döblin’s novel refers to different meanings of ‘world’ that are implied in these questions: It depicts the ‘discovery’ and violent colonization of the ‘New World’ both from the perspective of the indigene people and the Europeans, as well as the ‘Jesuit republic’ as a different project of colonization with an utopian aspect. Written in exile, it also uses the detour via an exotic setting to diagnose a crisis of Europe. Finally it tries to develop a narrative form beyond the novel, using different forms of mythic but also topographic narration which are figured as the materiality of the Amazonas-‘stream.’

For a long time Walter Benjamin was figured as the intellectual in-between: as the sole genius who related different if not conflicting positions and was able to overcome outgrown distinctions and to transgress the boundaries of well-established theories and disciplines. An academic outsider, he became the forerunner of important theoretical innovations of today. Benjamin’s work therefore underwent numerous renaissances since the 1950s and maintained its actuality in different contexts and epochs of thought. But is this still true today? If all these assumptions are to be more than mere rhetoric to foster the claim of intellectual prestige for a past thinker, we have to ask if they are still valid in relation to contemporary theory. I would even stress that we have to ask this question in a twofold way. First, is Benjamin’s thought still transgressive in a sense that exceeds his anticipation of radical cultural criticism and media theory? For even if he preceded these movements, they have been quite firmly established by now; thus today Benjamin could hardly be more than a founding father in this context, a past name, a source of authority or of pretensions. If we still believe in the actuality of Benjamin, however, we have to ask if, and in what respect, Benjamin still troubles theory and which kinds of boundaries he still transgresses.

Kant's relation to religion and theology is complex since he tries both to delimit theology's influence and to inherit its discursive power. The essay explores the different critical strategies and rhetorical means that Kant uses to deal with theology: theological analogies and metaphors in his systematic thought, a new kind of ,philosophy of religion,' a political theology of civil society, and finally a specific way of reading the Bible.

L'A. etudie la methode historiographique et l'influence de l'oeuvre de l'historien protestant allemand Julius Wellhausen qui publia en 1878 une oeuvre fondamentale : Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. L'historien y deploie une methode de lecture des textes bibliques qui peut etre decrite comme brosser l'histoire a contre-poil : refusant aux ecrits tout statut apodictique, il voit en eux les symptomes d'une autre histoire cachee et peut remettre en question l'interpretation commune de l'histoire du judaisme, notamment le role qui ont joue la loi ou la theocratie. Cette methode, qui a inspire Nietzsche, a conduit a des conclusions hâtives que d'autres histoiriens (tels M. Buber) se sont employes a corriger. Elle a toutefois eu l'inestimable merite d'apprendre a envisager le texte comme un complexe de niveaux de signification, comme un champ de force, champ de bataille pour la lecture, et a pu inspirer des historiens comme G. Scholem.