This essay rethinks the meanings of German, critique, and new to delineate the contours of German studies in the present historical moment. The discussion of the concept of “German” suggests an understanding of German studies as a discursive site for reflecting on the political and for making sense of community and belonging, while the discussion of “critique” suggests an approach that places German thought and literature in the pluriverse of thinking and imagination around the world. Finally, by tracing the morphing of the imperative of newness into singularity, the essay proposes to conceive of German studies in terms of a curated exhibition of the ideas, visions, images, and models of community associated with the designation “German.”

This essay investigates tragic theater from French classicism to German classicism in relation to the ritualized ceremonies and spectacles of the early modern state, which I summarily refer to as ceremonial theater. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the relationship between tragedy and ceremonial theater went through four major phases: 1) sponsored by the state, tragedy was initially continuous with ceremonial theater; 2) finding a new source of the tragic in the implacable conflict between public sovereign power and insistent desires of the royal flesh, Racine created a tragic theater that contested ceremonial theater; 3) after Racine, ceremonial theater and tragedy moved in sharply diverging directions, with the former falling into a steady decline and the latter turning towards the sentiments and concerns of private persons; 4) in German classicism, especially in Schiller's classical dramas, ceremonial theater and tragedy were joined together again—by means of the appropriation of ceremonial theater by the tragic stage. Now the tragic stage established itself as an autonomous realm of the imagination, in which the moribund ceremonial theater came back to life. In the course of these centuries, the aesthetics of tragedy had changed, while the political world witnessed dramatic transformations. A study of European tragic theater in relation to political rituals during this eventful period, therefore, provides a new perspective on the interaction between aesthetics and politics.

Abstract: This essay revisits some familiar diplomatic encounters between European nations and China in the decades around 1800. It proceeds from a theoretical distinction between diplomacy within an international society and diplomacy between international societies. The set of ideas, principles, and institutions of diplomatic interaction within an international society may be summarily termed its diplomatic culture. Diplomacy between international societies lacks a shared diplomatic culture, involving instead negotiations between different diplomatic cultures. The European embassies to China around 1800 epitomize diplomacy between international societies. The essay examines in some detail the attempts on both sides to make sense of the diplomatic exchange, in which they were engaged: translating documents, documenting actions, and interpreting the events by poetic means. All these attempts turned out to entrench differences rather than induce agreements. This predicament was to be resolved only by violence.