Monika Raič holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Innsbruck and Magistra Artium in Political Science and Comparative and General Literature from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Romance Literatures at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.

Her research is situated between the disciplines of comparative literature, cultural studies and political philosophy with a specialization in Latin American, German and French literatures with a historical focus between the 19th and 21st centuries. As part of her doctoral thesis she studied discussions on cosmopolitanism, world literature and Orientalism from an aesthetic, philosophical and postcolonial point of view. She is currently developing her habilitation project Politics of Loneliness - Problems of Recognition, where she investigates the topos of loneliness in its aesthetic expression in literature and film and around the problem of recognition at the individual, social and global political level.

Current publications

Books

2024. Weltliteratur in kosmopolitischer Absicht. Maxime Du Camp, Gustave Flaubert und Roberto Arlt im ‚Orient‘. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. (en proceso de publicación)

2023. África de Roberto Arlt. Hacia una edición crítica. Con Sylvia Saítta y Juan Pablo Canala. Iberoamericana/Vervuert. (en proceso de publicación)

Selection of articles

2023. “Terra obscura. Epistemología y agencialidad en Gracias de Pablo Katchadjian”. En: Estéticas de la tierra en América. Literatura – cine – arte. Eds. Jenny Haase y Jörg Dünne. Vervuert/Iberoamericana. (en proceso de publicación)

2023. “Todo es posible en este mundo.” Representación entre particularismo y universalismo en el drama África de Roberto Arlt.” En: África de Roberto Arlt. Hacía una edición crítica. Ed. Juan Pablo Canala, Sylvia Saítta, Friedhelm Schmidt-Welle y Monika Raič. Vervuert/Iberoamericana. (en proceso de publicación)

2019. “Argentina – España – Marruecos. Apuntes para un cosmopolitismo marginal periférico”. En: América Latina – África del Norte – España. Traslaciones culturales, intelectuales y literarias. Eds. Stephanie Fleischmann y Ana Nenadović. Vervuert/Iberoamericana.

2018. “Guerra « al margen del cable ». Anticipación de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en las crónicas de Roberto Arlt”. En: Babel 38 | -1. 2018, p. 189-206. Ed. José García-Romeu.

2018. “Oriente en la gran pantalla. Nociones del desierto en The Mistress of Atlantis, Morocco y las Aguafuertes marroquíes”. En: deSignis. Cine y Literatura. Interferencias e intersecciones. Eds. Sabine Schlickers, Jörg Türschmann y Mónica Satarain. p. 135-145.

2018. “Maxime Du Camp”. In: The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.06: French Writing and Culture: Early Twentieth Century, 1900-1945. Ed. Jennifer Yee. https://www.literaryencyclopedia.com/php/speople.php?UID=14115&rec=true

Research project at CALAS

Title: Loneliness - Crisis of formation of individual and collective identities.

Abstract: The central proposal of this project is to develop a psychoanalytic-political understanding of the term solitude, which is presented as a key term in Octavio Paz's essay El laberinto de la soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude). In this sense, loneliness is not understood as the feeling or condition of feeling particularly lonely or isolated, but as the result of an interrupted process and a crisis of recognition. Based on the Latin American peripheral-postcolonial perspective and its artistic representations, it is hypothesized that loneliness can be understood as the consequence of a process of crisis in the formation of cultural, individual or national identity. Loneliness, then, would be the result of a dialectic of crisis in recognition, both individual and political, within a process of identity construction. The project is structured in three parts in which we examine: a) the relationship between Octavio Paz's writings and psychoanalysis; b) the term solitude from a philosophical point of view, that is, understanding it as a crisis of the subject (individual or collective) and of its existence in the world; and c) the political and aesthetic dimensions of solitude.

My intention with this project is to contribute to the study of strategic identities by exploring how the ruptures and fusions of the particular Mexican national identity are described in Octavio Paz's canonical text. In parallel, I would also like to extend this analysis to a Latin American scale. Furthermore, I seek to contribute to the field of the history of knowledge, particularly with regard to the transmission of ideas between different cultures. In particular, I am interested in working with the presence of psychoanalysis and German-language philosophy in the Mexican and Latin American context, since the ideas that Paz uses in his work derive from the translations that reached Mexico via Spain, through José Ortega y Gassett, in the case of psychoanalysis, for example. Finally, my project also raises the question of how, from a current historical perspective, it is possible to establish significant links between thought and/or artistic forms of expression and those aspects related to national, ethnic or cultural identity.