School of Language & Literature
University of Aberdeen
juliaholzl@abdn.ac.uk (alternatively: julia.hoelzl@gmx.at)
Areas of Specialization
20th Century and Contemporary “Continental Thought” (primarily Blanchot, Heidegger, and Nancy); Philosophies of Literature; Phenomenology; Metaphilosophy
Education
2010-2013
(Post-)Doctoral Researcher, The Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen
Dissertation (working title): In finitude: Toward a Language of the Limit
Advisor: Christopher Fynsk
2009
Doctor of Philosophy (summa cum laude), European Graduate School/Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
Dissertation: Transience. A poiesis, of dis/appearance
Advisors: Wolfgang Schirmacher and Jean-Luc Nancy
2006
M.A. in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation(with
distinction), University of Innsbruck/Universitat Jaume I de Castelló
Thesis: Beyond Eden [distorting symmetree]
Advisor: Wolfgang Sützl
2004
Magistra philosophiae (M.A.) in Political Science, History, and Sociology (with distinction), University of Vienna/Universidad de Granada
Thesis: Frieden er-finden. (Post-)Modernes verwinden, Inperfektes verzählen
Advisor: Wolfgang Dietrich
Profile
Currently completing a second doctorate at the Centre for Modern Thought, I received my PhD from the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee, Switzerland), where I also hold the Maurice Blanchot Fellowship.
Prior to that, I studied in Austria and Spain, obtaining an M.A. in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation and a “Magistra phil.” (M.A.) in Political Science, History, and Sociology.
In addition to having worked as an editor and press officer, as well as for several NGO's, I taught on a variety of topics in the humanities—including “On Finitude”, co-directed with Christopher Fynsk—and was appointed Visiting Professor at the Institute of International Studies at Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok, in 2009.
Dissertation
Whilst my first dissertation, published in 2010, attempted to unfold an onto-phenomenology of transience (a poiesis of the only once, as the only once), my current project addresses the question of finitude:
Finitude, here conceived as finis (limit, end), and thus as absolute finitude, not as finite absolute, names the condition of and for our being-in-the-world. Without end, nothing is given, and finitude is that by which the world is given as such -- a(s) singular ending of that which is ending, each time.
And how are we to say such end? How to say the end as such, as end, as that which is ending, each time, how, to say it with Blanchot’s singular saying of such ending, to say this: “that nothing is what there is, and first of all nothing beyond”?
Attempting to think Heidegger with and against Heidegger, and to do so via Blanchot (and vice versa), the aim of this thesis is to unfold in/possibilities for such language of the limit.
It seems certain: Finitude cannot be said -- but can it be written? For how to write the end as end (as singular ending of that which is ending), how to write the limit (as and at the limit)?
Such writing of finitude must be (a) writing in finitude, and such writing, it will be argued, must be a(s) fragmentary writing.
The finite fragment: not merely another format.
Undone rather than unfinished, always, it cannot and must not be reduced to its fragmentary “form” -- the finite fragment does not have to be written in fragments (not every fragment is a/s fragment) but is to be written as fragment. Eluding Romantic (in)completions, neither part nor whole, but outside, always outside, always not beyond, always only on(c)e, ein-malig, the fragment is to be written singularly, never in the plural.
Continuously re-producing its own condition, always in-scribing its own ending, it is the fragment, and perhaps the fragment alone, that might be able to say [in] finitude: as finitude.
