The Mathematical Imagination: On the Origins and Promise of Critical Theory

Matthew Handelman

Open Access Published by Fordham University Press 2019

The Mathematical Imagination

On the Origins and Promise of Critical Theory

Matthew Handelman

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823283859

Overview
Contents

About this book

During the Weimar Republic, mathematics provided Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer – friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School – with tools to navigate the crises of modernity. This study explores the histories of mathematics at the origin of critical theory and shows the enduring relevance of mathematics for critical thought.

This book joins a renaissance of scholarly interest in German-Jewish intellectuals, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Gershom Scholem, offering a unique synthesis of their insights into language, messianism, and cultural critique.

Author / Editor information

Handelman Matthew :

Matthew Handelman is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Michigan State University.Matthew Handelman is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Michigan State University.

Reviews

Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois–Chicago:
Handelman shows how spiritual, quirky, and inventive engagements with math could suggest its affinities with projects of emancipation and ethics of dignity. His argument troubles oppositions between the humanities and STEM fields and promises to renew how humanists regard the incursion of positivism in the digitialization of method and episteme.

The Mathematical Imagination presents mathematics and digital technologies as providing a key to unlock the critical possibilities hidden in language to give a voice to silenced communities... [Handelman's] methodology and ideology are deliberately provocative, and he intends to develop a post-academic approach to fix the weaknesses of traditional and official discourse.

Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley:
Against the familiar lament that the inappropriate application of mathematical reasoning abets social reification, de-vitalizing abstraction and instrumental rationality, Matthew Handelman rescues forgotten attempts by three leading German Jewish intellectuals, Rosenzweig, Scholem and Kracauer, to argue otherwise. In their search for a ‘negative mathematics’ that has critical potential, they foreshadowed ways in which the yawning gap between the humanities and STEM fields may be overcome in our digital age.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction. The Prob lem of Mathe matics in Critical Theory Open Access Download PDF	1
One. The Trou ble with Logical Positivism: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and the Origins of Critical Theory Open Access Download PDF	25
Two. The Philosophy of Mathe matics: Privation and Repre sen ta tion in Gershom Scholem’s Negative Aesthetics Open Access Download PDF	65
Three. Infinitesimal Calculus: Subjectivity, Motion, and Franz Rosenzweig’s Messianism Open Access Download PDF	104
Four. Geometry: Projection and Space in Siegfried Kracauer’s Aesthetics of Theory Open Access Download PDF	145
Conclusion. Who’s Afraid of Mathe matics? Critical Theory in the Digital Age Open Access Download PDF	187
Acknowledgments Open Access Download PDF	201
Notes Open Access Download PDF	205
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	245
Index Open Access Download PDF	269

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 6
- Other: 6
Keywords: critical theory; Digital Humanities; German-Jewish thought; Kracauer; mathematics; Rosenzweig; Scholem; The Frankfurt School

eBook

Published: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 9780823283859