Rolf Kailuweit
Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany
Rolf Kailuweit wrote a Ph.D. thesis in 1996 on Diglossic Attitudes in Catalonia (1759-1859) and a postdoctoral qualification for professorship (Habilitation) on the Syntax and Semantics of French and Italian Verbs of Emotion in 2003. Since 2004 he has been tenured Professor for Romance Language and Media Studies in the Department of Romance Languages at the Universität Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany). From April 2008 to March 2009 he is internal fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) with a project concerning River Plate Spanish: the Creation of a Linguistic and Cultural Space.
Articles of Rolf Kailuweit
Postmodern Nomadism and the Beginnings of a Global Village
This paper comments on Vilém Flusser’s essay on new nomadism as an epochal change. The author takes a slightly critical viewpoint of Flusser’s definition of nomadism as a practice of archaic as well as of mediacentred life nowadays and discusses the rather traditional sedentary form Flusser adopts for his composition. The author bases his critique upon questions such as: is it really the Information Revolution and not the Industrial Revolution that leads to the end of the Neolithic Age? Is it only a virtual nomadism that came about in 1990 or does the epochal change concern also physical “nomadic” movement? In discussing Flusser’s essay the author points out the differences of meaning evident in Flusser’s original German text and the English translation. This leads to different possible interpretations of Flussers essay. The author closes by discussing the concepts of the idiot and the nomad. He clarifies how these concepts are relevant in a post-modern society and presents the possibility that the wisdom of idiocy is a survival strategy.