Anita Traninger, born in Amstetten, Austria, in 1969. Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin.
Fellow (1 March 2009 – 30 June 2009)
THE INVISIBLE MECHANICS OF CONSCIENCE: THE METHODOLOGY OF EARLY CASUISTRY AND THE AUTO-REFLEXIVE MODELLING OF THE CONFESSOR
In my work on confessional manuals of the 15th and early 16th centuries, I was less interested in the content of theological teachings than in identifying traces of the language and the figures of thought of rhetoric and dialectics. In order to delineate a manageable field of investigation, I chose to focus on anger (ira) to trace the interferences between logic and moral reflection. During my stay, I prepared an outline for an article on the conceptualisation of anger as a notion at the intersection of affect, conscience, and logic. Discussions with the members of the theme group on meditation proved invaluable and also helped me to reframe the central tenets of the book which I am currently writing on media and genres of early modern debates about knowledge, and to which my NIAS project is closely connected. I was able to develop a more precise understanding of what it means to immerse oneself in something, which consequently informed the crucial chapter on the ambiguities of declamation which I largely completed during my four-month stay.