John H. Smith bio & publications

Director, CTI
Professor and Chair
Department of German
jhsmith@uci.edu

Smith’s work focuses on the intersection of philosophy and theory, especially the afterlife of German thought in contemporary criticism. Smith has written among other topics on the various functions and effects of rhetoric in Hegelian dialectics (The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel’s Philosophy of Bildung), on the complex positions that Hegel takes in Derrida’s oeuvre, on different theories of (post)nationalism that emerge out of Hegel and Nietzsche, and on concepts of agency in feminist and queer theory.

Smith’s recent work highlights the concept of the will in a variety of critical locations: as a nodal point in nineteenth-century discourses (sexological, psychological, philosophical, forensic); as a common trope in master narratives of nationalism and politics (“will of the people,” Volkswille, “national will,” political Willensbildung, etc.); as a concept that allows us to formulate a dialectical theory of agency after the “death of the subject” (Dialectics of the Will).

At present he is working on a pedagogically oriented book on German philosophy for critical theory and on a study of religion, Enlightenment, the university, and the death of God.

Selected Publications
“German Philosophy for Critical Theory.” Work in progress.
“The Death of God: History of an Idea.” Work in progress.
Dialectics of the Will: Freedom, Power, and Understanding in Modern French and German Thought. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2000.
The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of Bildung. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988.

Articles
“The Sexual Politics of Nietzsche’s große Politik.” The Definition of Difference and the Creation of a German National Identity. Ed. Donna L. Hoffmeister. Stanford: Stanford UP, forthcoming.
“Good Willing and the Practice of Friendship—A Dialogue.” Literary Paternity/Literary Friendship. Ed. Gerhard Richter, forthcoming (34 ms. pages).
“Thesen über den deutschen Willen.” Die nationale Identität der Deutschen: Philosophische Imaginationen und historische Realität deutscher Mentalität. Ed. Wolfgang Bialas, forthcoming (28 ms. Pages)
“Lessings didaktisch-dialektisches Testament für uns, ‘die wir itzt leben’; oder, How Erziehung Makes a Difference.” Lessing-Yearbook Eds. Georg Braungart and Richard Schade. 1999.
“Of Spirit(s) and Will(s).” Hegel After Derrida. Ed. Stuart Barnett. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. 64-90.
“Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’: Politics Beyond (Hegelian) Recognition.” New German Critique 73 (Summer, 1998) 133-63.
“Does Feminism Have/Need a Will of its Own?” Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), Memory, History, and Critique: European Identity at the Millenium. Eds. Frank Brinkhuis and Sascha Talmor. Cambridge: MIT Press (CD Rom), 1997 (17 ms. pages).
“Sighting the Spirit: Rhetorical Visions of Geist in Hegel’s Enzyklopädie.” Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy. Ed. David M. Levin. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. 241-64.
“Wie männlich ist der Wille? Ein ethischer Grundbegriff, andersrum.” Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann? Ed. Walter Erhart. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1997. 114-33.
“Was erben wir vom Willen der Aufklärung?” Nach der Aufklärung? Beiträge zum Diskurs der Kulturwissenschaften. Eds. Wolfgang Klein and Waltraud-Naumann Beyer. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995. 263-76.
“Queering the Will.” Spec Issue of symploke (The Next Generation) 3.1 (Winter, 1995) 7-28.
“The Language of Mastery and the Mastery of Language: The Recognition of Rhetoric in Hegel.” Spec. issue of Clio, A Journal of Literature, History, Philosophy of History (Donald P. Verene. Memory and Imagination: Hegel, Vico, and Cassirer) 23.4 (Summer 1994) 377-395.
“The ‘Transcendance’ of the Individual." Diacritics 19.2 (1989) 80-98.
“Abulia: Sexuality and Diseases of the Will in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Genders 6 (Fall 1989) 102-124.
“Cultivating Gender: Sexual Difference and (the) Bildung(sroman).” Spec. issue of Michigan German Studies (on the Bildungsroman) 13.2 (Fall 1987) 206-225.
“U-Topian Hegel: Dialectic and its Other in Poststructuralism." German Quarterly 60.2 (1987) 237-61.
“The Call of the Letter; or, The Textual Identity of Handke’s Kurzer Brief zum langen Abschied.” Knjizevna Kritika (Literary Criticism) 1 (1986) 52-62.
“Dialogic Midwifery in Kleist’s Marquise von O and the Hermeneutics of Telling the Untold in Kant and Plato.” PMLA 100.2 (March, 1985) 203-19.
“Polemical Rhetoric and the Dialectics of Kritik in Hegel’s Jena Essays.” Rhetoric and Philosophy18.1 (1985) 31-57.

Translations
Koslowski, Peter. “(De)Construction Sites of Postmodernism” (“Die Baustellen der Postmoderne--Wider die Vollendungszwang der Moderne”). Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy. Tr. John H. Smith and Jane O. Newman. Ed. Ingeborg Hoesterey.Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.
Hamacher, Werner. “The Promise of Interpretation: Reflections on the Hermeneutical Imperative in Kant and Nietzsche” (“Das Versprechen der Auslegung: Überlegungen zum hermeneutischen Imperativ bei Kant und Nietzsche”). Looking After Nietzsche. Tr. John H. Smith. Ed. Laurence A. Rickels. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. 19-48.
Loos, Adolf. Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897-1900 (Ins Leere gesprochen) and Contraries: Collected Essays, vol.2 (Trotzdem). Tr. John H. Smith. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982-84.
Adorno, Theodor. “Functionalism Today.” Tr. John H. Smith. Oppositions: A Journal for Ideas and Criticism and Architecture 17 (1979) 31-41.
Bloch, Ernst. “Formative Education, Engineering Form, Ornament” (“Bildung, Ingenieurform, Ornament”). Trans. John H. Smith. Oppositions 17(1979). 42-52.