Rüdiger Campe
· Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of German Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative LiteratureYale University · Comparative Literature
Active 1990–2025
About
Rüdiger Campe is the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of German Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature. His work studies practices, genres, and institutions of literature from early modernity to the modern and contemporary periods. He operates under the assumption that literature, or la chose littéraire, is not a fixed entity but undergoes historical changes and manifests in a plurality of cultural forms. Campe's earlier publications focus on the European trajectory from traditional poetics and rhetoric to aesthetics, exploring interpersonal communication in literature through psychology, physiognomy, semiotics, and linguistics. His notable works include 'Affekt und Ausdruck' (Emotion and Expression, 1990), which examines these themes, and 'The Game of Probability. From Pascal to Kleist' (2012), which discusses representation during the probabilistic revolution. His studies on the novel from the 18th century to the present highlight the genre's role in developing and requiring theory, particularly through the concept of the 'novel of institution' as a supplement to the 'Bildungsroman.' Currently, Campe's research broadens to explore the practices, genres, and institutions of literature in more theoretical terms, including frameworks like 'Writing Scenes' that analyze cultural production at the intersection of bodily practices, techniques, technology, and meaning. His work also investigates the legal and political implications of literary forms by contrasting the contract model of communication with representational models of speech.
Research topics
- Philosophy
- Computer Science
- Art
- Literature
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Epistemology
- Linguistics
- History
- Social psychology
- Psychology
- Law
- Aesthetics
Selected publications
2025-12-14
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingMetaphor and Description. Ernst Mach's On the Principle of Comparison inPhysics, With an Outlook on Blumenberg's Metaphorology.This article discusses the centerpiece for Mach's understanding of science in terms of language and communication in his 1894 Popular Scientific Lectures.Mach's lecture uses two different starting points: comparison (metaphor) and description.With its relation to concept, comparison (metaphor) implies the traditional teleological history of knowledge.Description, in contrast, is the essentially ahistorical key term of 19th-century positivism and phenomenology.Mach's theory of science, this paper argues, is characterized by the conflictual simultaneity of both tendencies.The solution his lecture provides can therefore be seen as a decisive theoretical statement.To support this reading, the lecture is discussed in the broader context of Popular Scientific Lectures and other works by Mach.In an even larger context, the paper argues that Mach's configuration of metaphor and description in the age of positivism anticipates the similar configuration Blumenberg develops in the phenomenological context.
“A New Light Broke upon the First Person …”
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-04-30
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingCornell University Press eBooks · 2023
1st authorCorresponding- Philosophy
A cknowl e dgm e ntsThe idea for this book first grew out of my parasocial relationship with Walter Benjamin.My obsession led me beyond his archive to retrace Benjamin's footsteps through Bern, Switzerland, the Paris Arcades, and even Peacock Island, just outside of
[„Eingebettet in einen größeren Handlungszusammenhang“. Das Skript, nach Raymond Chandler]
2023-08-08
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingHistorisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik Online · 2023-02-02
dataset1st authorCorrespondingInstitution und Affekte im Neostoizismus und bei Thomas Hobbes
2023-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingNew German Critique · 2023-08-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingGeorg Lukács’s argument of form and formation is traced from The Theory of the Novel to History and Class Consciousness, especially “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” The concept of form in The Theory of the Novel is compared to the contemporary philosophy of science by Émile Boutroux’s and Georg Simmel’s lectures on Kant and, in particular, Kantian aesthetics. Form and formation are in the scientific and in the aesthetic context developed against the backdrop of the deficit or even lack of formal organization and, consequently, as a necessary yet contingent intervention. This understanding of form characterizes, for Lukács, the modern novel as well as the capitalist economic and social system. Against Hegel’s teleology of the spirit but consistent with Marx, the modernity of the novel and of capitalism, respectively, appears in Lukács thus as structurally defining in and of history.
Die Institution im Roman. Robert Musil
2023-09-04
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingMusils Roman bestimmt den Platz der Literatur in unserer Welt neu. Institutionalität als Möglichkeitsraum wird dabei zum Leitgedanken der Interpretation des Mann ohne Eigenschaften; und der allgemeine Gattungsbegriff eines Institutionenromans in der klassischen Moderne findet in diesem Roman seine grundlegende Realisierung.
Fürsprache als rhetorische Sprechsituation und die Geschichte der Rhetorik
Literatur und Recht · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingZusammenfassung Um die Beziehung der Rhetorik zum Recht geht es in diesem Abriss aus dem Gesichtspunkt der Fürsprache oder des advokatorischen Sprechens. An der so in den Blick kommenden Stelle hängen in der Tradition Europas Institution und Sprechform, Einzelheiten der sprachlichen Verfahren und übergreifende Zielsetzungen der Redekunst im Ansatz aneinander.
Humanities nach den Geisteswissenschaften
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte · 2023-02-28
articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 20 shared
Francesco Casetti
- 17 shared
Gundula Kreuzer
- 17 shared
Craig Buckley
- 16 shared
Rüdiger
University of Iowa
- 16 shared
Beatriz Colomina
Princeton University
- 16 shared
Elisabeth Strowick
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- 16 shared
Martha Mohr
University of Iowa
- 16 shared
Francesco Campe
University of Minnesota System
Awards & honors
- Zurich Distinguished Lectures (2020)
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