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 | This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited by the subject or by someone connected to the subject. (May 2026) |
David Ratmoko | |
|---|---|
| Citizenship | Swiss |
| Occupations | Literary scholar, translator |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Zurich |
| Thesis | On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon (2002) |
| Elisabeth Bronfen | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Comparative literature, English literature |
Sub-discipline | Psychoanalytic literary criticism, political theology |
| Institutions | University of Zurich HWZ University of Applied Sciences Zurich |
Notable works | On Spectrality (2006); translation of Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology (2009) |
David Ratmoko is a Swiss literary scholar and translator. He is the author of On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon (2006) and the translator of Jacob Taubes's Occidental Eschatology (Stanford University Press, 2009). His published work has addressed psychoanalytic literary criticism, political theology, continental philosophy, and literary treatments of guilt, redemption and spectrality.[1][2]
Education and academic career
[edit]Ratmoko studied English and German language and literature at the University of Zurich, completing his M.A. (lic. phil. I) in 1999. He received his Ph.D. from the same institution in 2002, with a dissertation on spectrality in the Western literary canon supervised by Elisabeth Bronfen.[1] Slavoj Žižek cited Ratmoko's 1999 master's thesis in two of his books: Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (Verso, 2001)[3] and Lacrimae rerum (Éditions Amsterdam, 2005).[4] Two chapters of the thesis were subsequently published in the Lacanian psychoanalytic journal RISS (Turia+Kant, Vienna) in 2002 and 2003.
From 2001 to 2006, he was a research assistant and instructor of English literature at the University of Zurich. In 2005, he held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale University.[1] From 2002 to 2016, Ratmoko was Professor of English at the HWZ University of Applied Sciences Zurich, serving as head of the English Department from 2005.[5]
Scholarly work and translation
[edit]On Spectrality
[edit]Ratmoko's monograph On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon was published by Peter Lang in 2006. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's notion of spectrality, the book examines figures of redemption from guilt across European literature, law and politics, ranging from the Book of Exodus and Greek tragedy to Dante's Comedia and Shakespeare's Hamlet, and engages with Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud.[1] The volume was published with advance praise from Derrida, who called it "a remarkable thesis" from which he had "benefited greatly".[6]
Subsequent scholarship has engaged with On Spectrality in studies of hauntology, literary spectrality, and spectral rhetoric. The book has been cited in a review essay in Comparative Literature Studies by José J. Álvarez, who grouped it with Derrida's Specters of Marx, Renée Bergland's The National Uncanny and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock's Spectral America as a constitutive reference in the field;[7] in Gothic Studies;[8] in studies of Shakespearean spectrality;[9] and as one of two foundational predecessors in Seth James Pierce's A Theory of Spectral Rhetoric (Springer, 2021).[10]
Translation of Taubes's Occidental Eschatology
[edit]In 2009 Stanford University Press published Ratmoko's English translation of Jacob Taubes's Occidental Eschatology in the press's Cultural Memory in the Present series. The book was the first English translation of Taubes's 1947 dissertation, originally published in German as Abendländische Eschatologie. Ratmoko also contributed an introductory preface.[2] The translation has been reviewed in scholarly journals including the AJS Review,[11] Religious Studies Review,[12] the H-Net review forum H-Judaic,[13] and The Bible and Critical Theory.[14] Reviewing the translation in H-Judaic, Nitzan Lebovic of Lehigh University called it "wonderfully translated and introduced by David Ratmoko."[13]
Other writings
[edit]Ratmoko has published essays on figures including Kierkegaard, Freud and Kleist in academic journals including the Kleist-Jahrbuch (J. B. Metzler)[15] and Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious. His 2003 Kleist-Jahrbuch essay on the spectral afterlife of Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas has been engaged with in subsequent Kleist scholarship, including in a review essay by Jeffrey Champlin in The Germanic Review.[16]
Selected publications
[edit]Books
[edit]- On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon. New York / Bern / Berlin: Peter Lang, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8204-8130-2.
Translations
[edit]- Taubes, Jacob. Occidental Eschatology. Translated with a preface by David Ratmoko. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8047-6028-7.
Selected articles and chapters
[edit]- "Olympia 1936 – Stadion der Massenbildung." In CINEMA 58: Manipulationen. Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2013.
- "Zum Begriff der Angst" (parts I and II). Kritische Ausgabe, 2010. (Archived)
- "Preface." In Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
- "Das Vorbild im Nachbild des Terrors: Eine Untersuchung des gespenstischen Nachlebens von Michael Kohlhaas." In Günter Blamberger (ed.), Kleist-Jahrbuch. Stuttgart / Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 2003.
- "Die dämonische Wiederkehr des Verworfenen." In RISS: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 53. Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2003, pp. 31–65.
- "Der Entwurf des Subjekts im Diskurs der Verantwortlichkeit." In RISS: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 50. Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2002, pp. 75–93.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d "On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon". Peter Lang. Retrieved 30 April 2026.
- ^ a b Taubes, Jacob (2009). Occidental Eschatology. Cultural Memory in the Present. Translated by Ratmoko, David. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-6028-7.
- ^ Žižek, Slavoj (2001). Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion. London / New York: Verso. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-85984-792-3.
- ^ Žižek, Slavoj (2005). "La théologie matérialiste de Krzysztof Kieslowski". Lacrimae rerum: Cinq essais sur Kieslowski, Hitchcock, Tarkovski et Lynch (in French). Paris: Éditions Amsterdam. note 39. ISBN 978-2-915547-06-1.
- ^ HWZ-Report 2010/2011: Jubiläumsausgabe «25 Jahre HWZ» (PDF) (Report) (in German). HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich. 2011. p. 27. Retrieved 2 May 2026.
- ^ Ratmoko, David (2006). On Spectrality: Fantasies of Redemption in the Western Canon. New York: Peter Lang. Front matter, advance praise. ISBN 978-0-8204-8130-2.
- ^ Álvarez, José J. (2015). "Review of Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination by María del Pilar Blanco". Comparative Literature Studies. 52 (1). Pennsylvania State University Press: 178–180. doi:10.5325/complitstudies.52.1.0178.
- ^ Germanà, Monica (2022). "Ghost-Tours, Body Snatchers, and Optical Illusions: An Introduction to Haunted Scotlands". Gothic Studies. 24 (1). Edinburgh University Press: 1–17.
- ^ Ingravallo, Tiziana (2024). "Spettralità femminile in The Winter's Tale: raccontare il silenzio, trasformare la memoria". Linguæ & — Journal of Modern Languages and Cultures (in Italian). 25 (1). Urbino University Press: 1–17. doi:10.14276/l.v25i1.4391.
- ^ Pierce, Seth James (2021). A Theory of Spectral Rhetoric: The Word between the Worlds. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-69679-5. ISBN 978-3-030-69678-8.
- ^ Muller, Jerry Z. (2011). "Review of Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Stanford University Press, 2009) and From Cult to Culture, eds. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Amir Engel (Stanford University Press, 2010)". AJS Review. 35 (1): 192–197. doi:10.1017/S0364009411000249.
- ^ Braiterman, Zachary (2013). "Review of Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko". Religious Studies Review. doi:10.1111/rsr.12038_5.
- ^ a b Lebovic, Nitzan (March 2011). "Jacob Taubes: Looking into the Beauty of the Night (review of Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko)". H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. Retrieved 30 April 2026.
- ^ "Review: Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, translated with a preface by David Ratmoko". The Bible and Critical Theory. 8 (2). 2012.
- ^ Ratmoko, David (2003). "Das Vorbild im Nachbild des Terrors: Eine Untersuchung des gespenstischen Nachlebens von Michael Kohlhaas". In Blamberger, Günter (ed.). Kleist-Jahrbuch. Stuttgart / Weimar: J. B. Metzler. pp. 218–231.
- ^ Champlin, Jeffrey (2010). "Authority in a Time of War: Twenty-First-Century Kleist Scholarship". The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory. 85 (1). Taylor & Francis: 70–78. doi:10.1080/00168891003598001.
External links
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