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Die Erfahrung des Gemeinplatzes

Zum ethnographischen Ursprung von ›Geistesgegenwart‹ bei Paulhan und Benjamin


Zurück zum Heft: Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 1/2025
DOI: 10.28937/9783787347193_4
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The present article outlines a conception of the commonplace as a ›small form‹. Against the backdrop of its modernist critique, the article’s aim is to highlight the ambiguity and paradoxical character of the commonplace that are central to Jean Paulhan’s literary and theoretical oeuvre. After establishing the idea of the commonplace as a rhetorical device and linguistic unit witha high potential for creative and literary uses, the article traces Paulhan’s concept of the commonplace to its experiential roots in the hain-teny, a Madagascan form of oral poetry, and demonstrates that Paulhan’s reflections on the uses of proverbs and set phrases had a formative influence on Walter Benjamin, traces of which can be found notably in the Storyteller-essay.