Vivian Liska

Professor of German literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Since 2013, she is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Abstract:

Woman as World: Subjectivity and Singularity in Buber’s Dialogic Writings

Buber’s depictions of woman and the feminine range from the most traditional to the most progressive. Both his exultations of woman as sublime and as caring but subordinate helper of man are age-old stereotypes. The most daring idea of femininity arises where Buber amalgamates these polarities. This occurs in particular striking ways in his “Die Frage an den Einzelnen” (The Question to the Singular) where internally clashing images of woman culminate in his association of woman with world. In this context, Buber’s formulations of woman as a corrective of the autonomous subject turn her into both the embodiment and the facilitator of the dialogic encounter itself. Two of his most prominent women readers, Else Lasker-Schüler and Margarete Susman, implicitly respond to this aspect of Buber’s thought in ways that reveal their own poetic and philosophical voice.