Marko Pajević

Profile

Marko Pajević took up an EU-funded Professorship in German Studies at the University of Tartu in January 2018 after holding positions at the Sorbonne, Paris IV, at Queen’s University Belfast as well as at the University of London Colleges of Royal Holloway and Queen Mary. He has published widely on poetics, including the (co-)edited volumes Mehrsprachigkeit und das Politische. Interferenzen in zeitgenössischer deutschsprachiger und baltischer Literatur (Tübingen, 2020), German and European Poetics after the Holocaust (Rochester, NY 2012), Poésie et musicalité. Liens, croisements, mutations (Paris, 2007), and Care, Control and COVID-19. Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature (Berlin/Boston, 2023). He has written monographs on Paul Celan, Zur Poetik Paul Celans. Gedicht und Mensch – Die Arbeit am Sinn (Heidelberg, 2000), and Franz Kafka, Kafka lesen. Acht Textanalysen (Bonn, 2009). At the heart of his work stands the development of a poetological anthropology, as presented most prominently in the monograph Poetisches Denken und die Frage nach dem Menschen. Grundzüge einer poetologischen Anthropologie (Freiburg/Br., 2012) and the essay 'Poetisch denken. Jetzt' (Vienna, 2022 [translated into Estonian, Tartu UP, 2023, and English, Routledge, 2023]). His interest in 'Thinking Language' became manifest in two British Academy-funded projects on Wilhelm von Humboldt and Henri Meschonnic, resulting in Special Issues of Forum for Modern Language Studies (Humboldt, 2017, 53/1) and Comparative Critical Studies (Meschonnic, 2018, 15/3), and The Meschonnic Reader. A Poetics of Society (Edinburgh, 2019) and finds a continuation in his edited volume The Abyss as a Concept for Cultural Theory. A Comparative Exploration (forthcoming Leiden 2023). This is part of his overarching research project for which see Academia for Poetic Thinking.