Imposing Identities: Representations of 'das Volk' from Herder to Büchner

Abstract

This dissertation examines the applications of the term Volk in selected philosophical writings of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and three historical dramas: Charlotte Corday. Eine Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Chören (1804), by Engel Christine Westphalen (1758-1840); Wilhelm Tell, by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1804); and Dantons Tod (1835) Georg Büchner (1813-1837). The concept of Volk underwent a significant semantic shift in the period around 1800 and has continued to occupy a range of meanings central to topics of nation, class, identity, and politics. The central approach of my study, which my title alludes to, is the stark division between descriptive and prescriptive instantiations of this term. Starting with Herder’s earlier writings on aesthetics and language, my analysis finds that the tensions within his varied and influential applications of Volk contribute to a fundamental problem of signification within the term. Compounded by the subsequent outbreak and course of the French Revolution, this problem appears with particular clarity in the three historical dramas examined in chapters two through four. Each of these dramas portrays Volk in a different way, both in the manner through which it actually appears on stage and in what is signified by this term. I demonstrate the extent and implications of this by analyzing each depicted Volk’s capability of engaging in action, Hannah Arendt’s theory of political participation. From these readings, I argue that the concept of Volk is inherently prescriptive and functions as a floating signifier, a term capable of adapting its variable meanings to fulfill almost any political narrative.