Prof. Dr. Alexander Düttmann

Kurzvita

After growing up in Barcelona, Alexander García Düttmann studied in Frankfurt am Main with Alfred Schmidt and in Paris with Jacques Derrida. Since 1992, he has lived in San Francisco, New York, Melbourne, and London, and he has taught at Stanford University, The University of Essex, Monash University, New York University, Middlesex University, Goldsmiths College, and the Royal College of Art. What are García Düttmann's most recent publications, and what are they about? In 2011, he published "Participation: Awareness of Semblance" (Konstanz University Press), an attempt to make sense of the concept of participation, especially in relation to art and politics. Thomas Bernhard observes at one point: "Each person wants to participate and at the same time to be left alone. And because it is not possible to have it both ways, there is always a conflict." In 2012, García Düttmann published "Naive Art: An Essay on Happiness" (August Verlag), a series of fragments set in San Francisco. Happiness, the author contends, lies in the creation of everyday habits that allow one to conceive of an idea and break with established conventions. In 2015, García Düttmann published "What Does Art Know? For An Aesthetics Of Resistance" (Konstanz University Press). In this book, he claims that art is a form of thinking and that for this reason it does not produce knowledge. Alexander García Düttmann has translated some of Derrida's works into German, and Benjamin's essay on Julien Green into French. He has also edited "Theory and Practice", an unpublished seminar by Jacques Derrida on Marx (Éditions Galilée 2017).What is Contemporary Art? On Political Ideology (Konstanz University Press) appeared in 2017,  Love Machine. The Origin of the Work of Art (Konstanz University Press) in 2018.