Alexander García Düttmann (born 1961 in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

) studied Philosophy in Frankfurt as a student of Alfred Schmidt and in Paris as a student of

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

Career

After obtaining his PhD from Frankfurt, he spent two years at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

as a Mellon Fellow. His first academic position in the UK was a lecturership in Philosophy at

Essex University The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass universities. The university comprises three campuses in the county, in Southend-on-Sea and ...

. Currently he is professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the

Berlin University of the Arts The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research uni ...

. He has taught at Monash University, Melbourne; at Middlesex University, where he was professor of Philosophy for seven years; at New York University, where he was a visiting professor in the autumn term of 1999; and at

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by ...

, where he taught Philosophy and Visual Culture.

Work

Düttmann has published a number of authored books, many of which have been translated into several languages (English, Italian, Croatian, Japanese). His research in the past few years has been focused on the philosophical problem of

deconstruction In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

, the concept of exaggeration in philosophy,

Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...

’s moral philosophy and the work of Italian filmmaker

Luchino Visconti Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of Italian neorealism, cinematic neorealism, but later ...

. Yet Visconti turns out to be Düttmann's pretext rather than subject, according to

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...

reviewer Bert Rebhandl: "This is the book's real flaw: We never learn why García Düttmann talks about Visconti at all."Bert Rebhandl, ''Im Wahn des Mädchens Natalia.'' In: ''

'', 25 January 2008: "Das eigentliche Manko dieses Buchs ist, dass nie deutlich wird, warum García Düttmann über Visconti schreibt." Currently, Düttmann deals with the question of participation in art and politics; he next will investigate the question of the contemporary in art, the relationship between photography and philosophy and the question of

immortality Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some species possess "biological immortality" due to an apparent lack of the Hayflick limit. From at least the time of the Ancient Mesopotamian religion, ancient Mesopotamians, there has been a con ...

in contemporary philosophy. On more than one occasion, he has collaborated with artists. In 2004 the chamber opera Liebeslied / My Suicides, for which he wrote the libretto, and which featured music by Paul Clark and photographs by Rut Blees Luxemburg, opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.

Publications (selection)

*1989: "La parole donnée", Paris: Galilée *1991: "Das Gedächtnis des Denkens: Versuch über Heidegger und Adorno", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *1993: "Uneins mit Aids", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *1997: "Zwischen den Kulturen", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *1999: "Freunde und Feinde", Wien: Turia&Kant *2000: "Kunstende: Drei ästhetische Studien", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *2004: "Philosophie der Übertreibung", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *2004: "So ist es: Ein philosophischer Kommentar zu Adornos ’Minima Moralia’", Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp *2005: "Verwisch die Spuren", Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes *2006: "Visconti: Einsichten in Fleisch und Blut", Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos *2008: "Derrida und ich. Das Problem der Dekonstruktion", Bielefeld: transcript *2011: "Teilnahme: Bewußtsein des Scheins": Konstanz: Konstanz University Press *2012: "Naive Kunst: Ein Versuch über das Glück", Berlin: August Verlag *2015: "Was weiß Kunst?: Für eine Ästhetik des Widerstands", Konstanz: Konstanz University Press

References

External links

Goldsmiths, University of London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duttmann, Alexander Garcia 1961 births Living people 21st-century Spanish philosophers 20th-century Spanish philosophers 20th-century German philosophers Phenomenologists Deconstruction German male writers 21st-century German philosophers Academic staff of the Berlin University of the Arts