Projects
The proposed study will examine the figure of the double in the intersection between theory of literature and philosophy in order to conceptualize the doppelganger as a political figure. The genealogy of the doppelganger will be traced back to Plato's mimetic theory.
The approach to the figure of the double will not be literary-historical, i.e. the motif of the double will not be followed from its beginning in ancient tragedy through its peak moment in the Romantic literature to its contemporary interpretations in modern and postmodern literature. Such investigations have already been done. My own work on the problem of the double will have as its starting point the introduction of Plato's theory of mimesis and the birth of images. In order to explore this, I will focus not so much on frequently discussed dialogues, such as "Republic" and "Laws", but rather on dialogues such as "Sophist" and "Statesman". The double as a political figure can be uncovered in the last two dialogues, where the role of phantasma without a prototype in the sphere of ideas is explicitly formulated.
Vernant and the birth of images, Auerbach and the term figure, and Lotman' s conceptualization of narrative will provide the three cornerstones of my research project with its goal to conceptualize the double as a political figure with respect to mimetic theories. The core of my project is formed by philosophical, political and social anthropology, although it will also incorporate argumentation from critical theory and deconstruction and will rely on the works of philosophers like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot, as well as Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, René Girard, and others.The hypothesis which I hope to argument through my study is that the double as a theoretical construct emerges as the point of interrupted conjunction between philosophy and literature. The political, hence, might be said to emerge in this interrupted conjunction.