Book Section
Through various cases and instances, this essay opens with the question of biography and the demands of its form: that is, biography’s attempt to reduce historical totalities to the page in moments of sudden condensation. It then introduces the figure of Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986), a doctor and later hand reader and sexologist, who appears on a diagram, constructed by Walter Benjamin in 1932, to map his life through his ‘Urbekanntschaften’ (primal acquaintances). It then seeks to transpose Benjamin’s diagram into other linear forms, such as a family tree, a diagram of chemical affinity, and an astral chart, to add one: the diagram as a map of the hand. This opens up a number of temporal, historical, and epistemic reductions, or cases of reduction, in Wolff’s work and beyond. It concludes with a particular moment in Wolff’s biography — her arrest in 1933 and her escape to Paris — as a final instance of the line, as border.
Keywords: Lines; Wolff, Charlotte; Benjamin, Walter; Palmistry; Borders; Boundaries; Reduction; Reductionism; Biography
Rights: © by the author(s). Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Part of The Case for Reduction Containing:
Introduction / Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Jakob Schillinger
The Case and the Signifier / Iracema Dulley
Haptic Reductions / Rachel Aumiller
Disalienation and Structuralism / Christopher Chamberlin
Black Box Allegories of Gulf Futurism / Özgün Eylül İşcen
Lines that Reduce
Post-anti-identitarianism / Ben Nichols
Nothing Beyond the Name / Sarath Jakka
Reduction in Computer Music / Federica Buongiorno
Reduction in Time / Alberica Bazzoni
Seeking Home / Amina ElHalawani
Law Is Other Wor(l)ds / Xenia Chiaramonte
On the List / Sam Dolbear, Ben Nichols, Claudia Peppel
White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy / Ben Nichols
Proust List Impulse
A List of Fears / Claudia Peppel
How to Bake X Cake / Iracema Dulley
Walking Away, Walking in Circles, Writing Lists / Rachel Aumiller
Title
Lines that Reduce
Subtitle
Biography, Palms, Borders
Author(s)
Sam Dolbear
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_06
Description
Through various cases and instances, this essay opens with the question of biography and the demands of its form: that is, biography’s attempt to reduce historical totalities to the page in moments of sudden condensation. It then introduces the figure of Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986), a doctor and later hand reader and sexologist, who appears on a diagram, constructed by Walter Benjamin in 1932, to map his life through his ‘Urbekanntschaften’ (primal acquaintances). It then seeks to transpose Benjamin’s diagram into other linear forms, such as a family tree, a diagram of chemical affinity, and an astral chart, to add one: the diagram as a map of the hand. This opens up a number of temporal, historical, and epistemic reductions, or cases of reduction, in Wolff’s work and beyond. It concludes with a particular moment in Wolff’s biography — her arrest in 1933 and her escape to Paris — as a final instance of the line, as border.
Is Part Of
The Case for Reduction
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
11 October 2022
Subject
Lines
Wolff, Charlotte
Benjamin, Walter
Palmistry
Borders
Boundaries
Reduction
Reductionism
Biography
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Language
en-GB
page start
117
page end
133
Source
The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 117–33

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Cite as: Sam Dolbear, ‘Lines that Reduce: Biography, Palms, Borders’, in The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 117-33 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_06>