Ibrahim Marazka is a PhD-candidate at the interdisciplinary Philosophy and Literature, PhD-Program, at Purdue University, Indiana (USA). He studied at the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, University of Chicago, and Purdue University. He holds MA-degrees in Philosophy and Islamic Studies. His areas of specialization include 19th and 20th century social and political philosophy as well as aesthetics. Currently, he writes his PhD-dissertation on the logical status of heteroptopia within a pan-optically administered space (see research abstract for more information.)
Ibrahim is interested in the topics, cosmopolitanism, post-national world order, post-colonial studies, and theories of power. In aesthetics, he is interested in cultural theory, modernism and state of the arts in post-1989 world. In his literary studies, he works on German literature and criticism in the Age of Goethe. He gave numerous talks in academic conferences on the work of the German dramatist and poet Heiner Müller. He conducted a thorough research of Heiner Müller’s archives at the Academy of the Arts (Berlin) and at the Humboldt Universität in 2009. His research focuses on the post-dramatic pieces, which Müller conceptualized and composed as fragments. He plans to publish his findings on the Müller’s post-dramatic fragments in a monograph.
Ibrahim has translated numerous contemporary German theater plays in cooperation with Goethe Institut and/or theaters (for an interview on his translation work, please follow this link http://www.goethe.de/ins/ps/ram/kue/bib/de11704669.htm ). He views translation and adaptation as a practice of cultural transfer. He wishes to communicate his practical experience in translation and his reflections and thoughts about it to this years Academy. Moreover, he is interested in problematizing the question about circulation (production and distribution) of cultural goods in the tension field of money-power, profit, mass-consumerism and subjective desires/needs, in order to answer the question which cultural goods lend themselves to be cross-culturally circulated and which cultural goods get in fact circulated, and why.
Ibrahim was awarded Fulbright Fellowship for three consecutive years (2010-2013) over his PhD-studies at Purdue U. and Univ. of Chicago. He was fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in Summer 2011. He was awarded the Scholarship of Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation over his Advanced Studies in Philosophy and Islamic Studies at the Freie Univ. Berlin on the basis of academic excellence and social-political leadership (2007-2009). He acts as Senator Representative at the Purdue Graduate Students Parliament, where he represents the Department of Philosophy.
In his spare time, Ibrahim likes to swim, to travel and to learn languages.. he has active knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, English and German, and passive knowledge of Ancient Greek and Middle High German. He is teaching himself French now by translating La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims and Reflections, because he says, “while I do not agree with everything he says, I relish reading this great stylist. Because it’s ‘late style’? Maybe.. certain is, joy brings you to a more profound knowledge. That I believe.”
