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MLN, Volume 126, Number 3, April 2011 (German Issue), pp. 439-445
(Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/mln.2011.0038

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/summary/v126/126.3.krauss.html

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 Constellations:
A Brief Introduction1
❦

Andrea Krauß

Constellations arise out of the conjunction of certain factors that are

significant for a situation, a process, a (textual) structure; they result
from the presence and the arrangement or grouping of certain factors
or elements. With reference to their astrological/astronomical seman-
tic content, talk of constellations can be rendered more precise both
discursively and in terms of a theory of representation (Darstellung).
Constellations thus point toward a theory of reading. They designate
an interpretive procedure that draws specific attention to the instable
conditions of this interpretation: To look from the earth into the sky
in order to ‘read’ the positions of the stars to one another, the con-
stellations, is to become a relative observer in relation to an investiga-
tive object that is continually shifting; and it is to observe puzzlingly
structured ‘surfaces’ that only coalesce into recognizable astral images
when an ‘external’ knowledge intrudes into the domain of dispersed
points of light, when significant patterns produce something legible
among these intrinsically unspecified shapes. Constellations therefore
accentuate the constellating practice of reading and its presupposi-
tions, they expose an object-formation, in which reading finds itself
referred in a specific way to other possible readings. What supposedly
appears as a given object does not in itself offer a foundation to the
constellating ‘texture’ but shows itself in its dynamic withdrawal to be
an inaccessible—or one might say: unlimitedly accessible ‘existence.’
Seen in this way, constellation becomes a paradoxical concept, since it

1
Translated by James McFarland.

MLN 126 (2011): 439–445 © 2011 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
440 Andrea Krauß

designates both the instrument and the object of reading, mutually

intertwined with each other in a complex interaction—a perpetual
interaction between the being of an object legibly constellated in what-
ever way, and the “being-thus” of an object as determined in a particular
way and hence the object of constellating (epistemic) operations.
Where constellations designate a problem of object-formation and
do not simply label such supposedly predetermined (historical)
relations as connections of literary-historical influence, biographi-
cally documented networks, or contexts of transmission available for
analysis; where, that is, constellations draw attention to the discursive
production of objects of knowledge, work with constellations exposes a
self-reflective dimension. They are able to hold in tension the inacces-
sible order of the object and the ordering principles of reading and
to expose this tension, inasmuch as they serve as theoretical figures
for the critique of representation and so manifest the determinate
mode of object formation and its reflection.
If the limits of reason were brought to consciousness by Kant and
if this experience or analytic of finitude (Foucault) establishes conscious-
ness as modern consciousness as such, then every differentiation of
modern knowledge is marked by this finitude. Every discursive limit
that this thought erects, every genre that is simply an effect of such
delimitation, but also every discipline that maintains the institutional
framework of such delimitation is founded in this finitude. At the
same time as modern knowledge production appears, the limits of
its delimitation appear as well: the experience of finitude becomes a
constitutive unrest that impels knowledge to continual self-overcoming.
Thought must think itself as limited, as knowledge that could poten-
tially be thought quite differently. This is where the epistemology of
constellations takes root. The experience of finitude is “what allows
the most diverse discourses and genres to come together in a constel-
lation above and beyond the borders of the disciplines”2: The limit of
thought that is in itself neither thinkable nor representable becomes
indirectly recognizable in the transgression of the ‘internal’ bound-
aries that structure the established ‘topography’ of thought. In this
way thought ‘reads’ itself with reference to a possible alternative. It
confronts itself, to the extent that other distributive and combinative
possibilities of discourse appear, with the presupposition-laden act of

2
“[. . .] welche erlaubt, unterschiedlichste Diskurse und Genres über die Grenzen
der Disziplinen hinaus in eine Konstellation zu bringen [. . .].” Marianne Schuller,
Moderne. Verluste. Literarischer Prozeß und Wissen (Basel, Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld
1997) 7. Translation James McFarland.
 M L N 441

positing its own delimitations. In the features of constellation, the

experience of finitude becomes effective as dynamic opening, that
is, it becomes legible in its representation (Darstellung).
Walter Benjamin and under his influence Theodor W. Adorno
have sketched out an epistemology of constellations. As distinct from
the “nineteenth-century concept of system,”3 constellation names that
epistemo-critical figure in which a truth not “direct[ly]”4 knowable is
able in a mediated way, through a specific constitutive modus of its “lin-
guistic form,”5 to become legible. While specialized “terminolog[ies]”
of knowledge tend to replace representation (Darstellung) with “sys-
tematic closure,” to put an “uninterrupted deductive concinnity of
science”6 in place of the “integral unity in the essence of truth,”7 here
on the contrary discontinuity becomes the origin of philosophical
representation (Darstellung). This takes account of the insight of the
philosophy of science that in the wake of ever more differentiated
disciplines, their “methodological incoherence” comes more and more
to the fore: “In each single scientific discipline new assumptions are
introduced without any deductive basis, and in each discipline previ-
ous problems are declared solved as emphatically as the impossibility
of solving them is asserted in other contexts.”8 From this perspective,
discontinuous scientific representation (Darstellung) transposes a dis-
ciplinary conflict, or one might say: the ‘inter-disciplinary’ negotiation
of discursive validity claims. For Benjamin such incoherence is by no
means accidental but essential for the further development of a theory
of knowledge that, starting from the discontinuous status of modern
sciences, could be at the same time a philosophical project (Entwurf),
that is epistemo-critical representation (Darstellung).
Against this background the heterogeneous constellation of analytic
concepts provides a context in which the limits of conceptual knowl-

3
“[. . .] Systembegriff des XIX. Jahrhunderts [. . .].” Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des
deutschen Trauerspiels, in Gesammelte Schriften I.1, eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann
Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991) 207. Translated as Walter
Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso,
1977) 28. Further references are to the German and English editions, (with the transla-
tion silently emended in places).
4
Ibid., 210; 30.
5
“[. . .] Sprachform [. . .].” Ibid., 221; 40.
6
“[. . .] systematische Geschlossenheit [. . .]”; “[. . .] lückenlose[n] Deduktionszusam-
menhang der Wissenschaft [. . .].” Ibid., 213; 33.
7
“[. . .] integrale[n] Einheit im Wesen der Wahrheit [. . .].” Ibid., 210; 30.
8
“Mit jedem einzelwissenschaftlichen Bereiche führen neue und unableitbare
Voraussetzungen sich ein, in jedem werden die Probleme der ihm vorgelagerten mit
derselben Nachdrücklichkeit als gelöst betrachtet, mit der die Unabschließbarkeit ihrer
Auflösung in anderem Zusammenhange behauptet wird.” Ibid., 213; 33.
442 Andrea Krauß

edge and its reflection in discontinuous relations can be presented.

In these relations conceptual and in particular historical differences are
inscribed. These are related to a phenomenology (of, say, Trauerspiel),
which depicts “in the most singular and eccentric of phenomena,
in both the weakest and clumsiest experiments and in the overripe
fruits of a period of decadence,”9 the “unique and extreme”10 aspect
of historical development, and in such a way that together with the
representative canon of a history (of Trauerspiel) the scope of analytic
concepts of knowledge is at stake. When deployed in terms of a cri-
tique of representation, constellations reveal their historical-theoretical
dimension: (only) in representation (Darstellung) is the “unique and
extreme” aspect of phenomena shown as a differential tension among
conceptual elements coordinated with one another in a constellated
way.
Talk of “constellations” thus aims at problematic and/or prob-
lematized object-formations in literature, theory, philosophy and
(literary) history, and inquires after possible consequences for a
theory of (scientific) representation (Darstellung). It opens a broad
field of possible questions: The specific constitution of constellations
in literature, whether as theme or as constructive procedure or both,
promises interesting insights into the epistemology of the literary.
Literature, inasmuch as it can contribute (ironically) to the reading
and writing of its (epistemological) ‘objectivization,’ reflects in this
way the interpretive operations of its interpreters. Moreover, constel-
lations are encountered where literary materials in their genesis and
transmission are emphatically at stake, as in discussions of editions and
translations. Constellations also gain relevance in an historical-theoretic
way when ‘(literary) history’ and historical tradition are grasped as a
problem of their conception.
The contributions to this issue of Modern Language Notes investigate
the question of constellations from various perspectives: Gerhard
Richter reconstructs Adorno’s engagement with the Hegelian legacy
with reference to Adorno’s concept of constellation. Here Adorno’s
constellation(s) enable not only insights into the complex translations
of non-identical readings that are continually establishing new rela-
tionships but draw attention beyond that to a concept of transmission
in which the inherited object remains suspended as something open

9
“[. . .] Singulärsten und Verschrobensten der Phänomene, in den ohnmächtigsten
und unbeholfensten Versuchen sowohl wie in den überreifen Erscheinungen der
Spätzeit [. . .].” Ibid., 227; 46.
10
“[. . .] Einmalig-Extreme [. . .].” Ibid., 215; 35.
 M L N 443

and still to come. James McFarland discusses the scope of constellation

as a philosophical concept. Through a reconsideration of Husserl’s
phenomenology of space, McFarland considers how the underdeter-
mined organizational form of constellation itself reveals a specific
productivity and in particular offers the possibility for conceptual
(self-)reflection on the relationship between the (philosophical)
observer and the object observed. Constellations play a role here
when dynamic and heterogeneous spatial perceptions bring the foun-
dations of the philosophical thinking of space into motion. Barbara
Hahn’s reading of Rahel. Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde takes
as its starting point the book’s epigraph from Hölderlin, in order to
interpret the compositional principle of a complex constellation of
modes of writing: “still and affected” (still und bewegt) is how Hahn
characterizes an arrangement that through the various versions of
the book brings diary entries, letters and aphorisms into a continu-
ally modified relation. Rahel’s use of the word “constellation” displays
a similar dynamic: constellation names a structure whose elements
indicate multiple and sometimes merely implicit relations, but also
(historical) breaks. Roland Reuß’s reading of Klopstock’s poem “Der
Zürchersee” considers constellating structures in the literary text.
Complex syntactic relations give rise here to networks of connections
that can be rendered concrete in multiple ways or remain undecid-
able, inhabiting the tension between biography, literary history and
textual organization. Through an engagement with contemporary
problems of interpretation and editing, Reuß displays an inaccessibility
inherent in the poem: the immanent limitations within the singular
literary text of a hermeneutic that has committed itself to searching
for a meaning that countervails the constellated order of its object.
Jocelyn Holland’s reading of Nietzsche’s essay “Ueber Wahrheit und
Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne” initially reconstructs a translation
problem posed by Nietzsche’s polyvalent metaphors, and proceeds to
the figures in Nietzsche’s text that are characteristic of plurality and
connectivity. Holland’s reading shows not merely the extent to which
Goethe’s morphological studies influenced Nietzsche’s discussion of
form in “Wahrheit und Lüge.” She goes on to investigate the specific
plurality of constellation: where the word appears in Nietzsche’s essay,
it indicates a poetological problematic that reflects the legibility of
the essay as an open, relational construction. The contributions from
Michael G. Levine and Eric Downing are concerned with conceptions
of temporality in texts by Walter Benjamin. Starting with the “Theses
on the Philosophy of History,” Levine investigates the temporality of
444 Andrea Krauß

messianic advent and relates this to the specific dynamic of Benjamin’s

notion of “constellation.” The “coming” of the Messiah is connected,
Levine maintains, with a “break in time” that is also an elision of
consciousness. Levine analyses this temporal structure with refer-
ence to Benjamin’s concept of the “now-time” (Jetztzeit) and relates
this structure to traumatic moments of interruption in the context
of the Eichmann trial. Eric Downing’s considerations of the relation
of magic practices and practices of reading in Benjamin emphasizes
a model of the sign in which the reading of things does not actualize
evident meanings but evokes hidden, not immediately visible corre-
spondences. Graphology, for instance, reads the words and letters of
human handwriting not in terms of their conventional significance
but in light of the bodily movements they register and the “animate
things” they embody. Temporality plays an essential role here. In the
material moment of movement in handwriting, a synchronic time
appears against the grain of the linear vector of linguistic sequence,
one in which readings of a “different,” non-intentional language—
perhaps constellating—reside. Marianne Schuller’s discussion of Aby
Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne reconstructs its arrangement of
images with respect to their complex mnemonic function. The specific
afterlife that is articulated by the selection and organization of images
makes possible the “appearance of a non-known”: Forms that seemed
obsolete make a spectral reappearance, while the specific arrangement
of images as a moveable and frequently varied constellation stages a
non-linear representational process whose results are unpredictable.
In the thematically open part of the issue, Erica Weitzman inves-
tigates moments of situation comedy in Kafka’s novel Der Verschollene
(Amerika). Taking her start from a passage in Kafka’s correspondence
where the formulation “almost necessary” occurs, Weitzman sketches
a situation comedy of the “almost necessary” that not only character-
izes the basic structures of Kafka’s plots but moreover can be seen
as a specific rereading of Kant’s analysis of the problem of causality.
Jonathan Luftig’s contribution investigates Kant’s “Observations on
the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” with respect to the claim
formulated therein that “true virtue” is “grounded” in a “shudder”
(Grausen). According to Kant, this shudder determines not only the
ethical posture of the melancholic temperament, but also the pos-
ture of the fictional character in “Carazan’s Dream,” a tale that Kant
invokes as an example of the “terrifying sublime.” Luftig discusses
the relation between the philosophical text and the fictional tale as
a structure of supplementation, in which fictional moments of the
 M L N 445

philosophical discourse of foundations can be recognized. Kristina

Mendicino analyses Paul Celan’s Meridian speech as speech, that is to
say, in terms both of its implication in and its dislocation from the laws
of traditional rhetoric. The specifically literary rhetoric of the Meri-
dian becomes particularly concrete in Celan’s discussion of Büchner’s
Dantons Tod. The Meridian wants to speak “on behalf of another” (in
eines Anderen Sache). It aims to make audible an unheard voice and in
so doing reveals “an other rhetoric.”

My thanks go to the editorial assistants Eberhard Froehlich, Christina

Hinz and Bryan Klausmeyer for their support with the preparation of
the documents for publication.