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ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ graduation ceremony at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Democracy

Book Launch: Peter Weiss, The Aesthetics of Resistance (Vol III), Translated by Joel Scott (Duke UP, 2025)

University Room: Omid & Gisel Kordestani Rooftop Conference Center (Q-801)
6 Rue du Colonel Combes 75007, Paris
Friday, April 4, 2025 - 17:00 to 19:00

ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ THE BOOK:
A major literary event, the publication of the final volume of Peter Weiss’s three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance makes one of the towering works of twentieth-century German literature available to English-speaking readers for the first time. Weiss’s crowning achievement, The Aesthetics of Resistance spans the period from the late 1930s to the end of World War II, dramatizing antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe.

Volume III, initially published in 1981, teems with characters, many of whom are based on historical figures. It commences in May of 1940, as the narrator’s parents flee Nazi forces in Eastern Europe and reunite with their son in Sweden. While in Stockholm, the narrator and other Communist activists living in exile struggle to build structures in the German underground. The story then follows Communist resistance fighter Charlotte Bischoff as she is smuggled to Bremen on a freighter. In Berlin, she contacts the narrator’s friends and joins the Red Orchestra resistance group. Soon, the Gestapo cracks the underground group’s code, arrests a number of its members, and takes them to Plötzensee Prison, where most of them are executed. Featuring the narrator’s meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature throughout, The Aesthetics of Resistance demonstrates the affinity between political resistance and art. Ultimately, Weiss argues that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding.

BIOS:
Joel Scott is a poet and translator from Sydney, Australia with a PhD in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies from Macquarie University. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Bildverbot and Diary Farm. His translation of the second volume of Peter Weiss’s magnum opus Die Ästhetik des Widerstands was published by Duke University Press in 2020, and received an honourable mention in the 2020 Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work.

Charlotte Thießen grew up in Portugal and lives as a poet and translator in Berlin. Between 2015 and 2022, as a member of artiCHOKE, she organized the reading and publication series of the same name for committed contemporary poetry. Her first chapbook "In This" was printed in 2016. In 2019, "Fragments of Baby" was published by Materialien (Munich). She is currently working on "Münzenfresser", a series of poems about time, body, reproductive labor, desire and shifts in perception.