The Mathematical Imagination - by Matthew Handelman

About the Book

During the Weimar Republic, mathematics provided Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer - friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School - with tools to navigate the crises of modernity. This study explores the histories of mathematics at the origin of critical theory and shows the enduring relevance of mathematics for critical thought.

Book Synopsis

During the Weimar Republic, mathematics provided Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer - friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School - with tools to navigate the crises of modernity. This study explores the histories of mathematics at the origin of critical theory and shows the enduring relevance of mathematics for critical thought.

Review Quotes

Against the familiar lament that the inappropriate application of mathematical reasoning abets social reification, de-vitalizing abstraction and instrumental rationality, Matthew Handelman rescues forgotten attempts by three leading German Jewish intellectuals, Rosenzweig, Scholem and Kracauer, to argue otherwise. In their search for a 'negative mathematics' that has critical potential, they foreshadowed ways in which the yawning gap between the humanities and STEM fields may be overcome in our digital age.---Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

Handelman shows how spiritual, quirky, and inventive engagements with math could suggest its affinities with projects of emancipation and ethics of dignity. His argument troubles oppositions between the humanities and STEM fields and promises to renew how humanists regard the incursion of positivism in the digitialization of method and episteme.---Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois-Chicago

Any reader interested in the Frankfurt School and the history of Critical Theory who subscribes to the longstanding notion that this school of thought is fundamentally incompatible with quantitative thinking and the field of mathematics is in for a surprise with The Mathematical Imagination... The strengths of The Mathematical Imagination lie in the way in which mathematics in reclaimed for the project of Critical Theory; the unusual connections it articulates in the work of Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Kracauer; and the author''s fluency in both mathematical and aesthetic theory.-- "Monatshefte"

The Mathematical Imagination presents mathematics and digital technologies as providing a key to unlock the critical possibilities hidden in language to give a voice to silenced communities... [Handelman's] methodology and ideology are deliberately provocative, and he intends to develop a post-academic approach to fix the weaknesses of traditional and official discourse.-- "Phenomenological Reviews"

About the Author

Matthew Handelman is Assistant Professor of German at Michigan State University and core faculty in the Digital Humanities.