*A pity that philosophers, being mortal like Socrates, are not allowed to go on riffing for centuries on end.
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/35/35887/1.html
(...)
"In 2008 I was on a sabbatical. By coincidence I was in Berlin, too. Kittler was giving his last lectures and his last seminars. The last ones on his chair. Later, he was guest professor at Humboldt University and he continued to lecture, but he complained that he was a "guest" now in his own house...
"Even though I had not been around for years, I certainly wanted to take the chance to show my respect to my old teacher. I went to all his last "official" lectures and to all his last "official" seminars, one entire term, his last term, as a student, again, and as an observer. The lectures and seminars were tremendously terrific. He surprised everybody again and again. He unfolded a theory - to give just one example - why Jesus was crucified and he claimed he is one of the few who would really know! Wow! It would not be funny, if it turns out that he is indeed among the few who knew this in our times. What would that tell us about us or about our times?
"I thought that all the Kittlerians would line up in the first row like pearls on a needle to listen to these last lectures. I thought that there would be fights and quarrels to be as close as possible to Kittler in the lecture or seminar room. Like the days of Lacan, Foucault, or Deleuze. To my surprise none of the Kittlerians who were not "on duty" would ever show up. I was the only one from any former generation who went as a student again to his lectures and to his seminars, to show at least my respect to him in that way, trying to sit in the first row again.
"In the very last session of his seminar entitled just "Hegel" he expressed his wish to us to be purely Hegelian: To bend a wreath of flowers as in Antiquity and to present this as teachers to future students. These were, actually, his last official spoken words, in class.
"The last public appearance occurred on the 18th of July 2011 in his Sophienstraße 22a. His last words in hospital, after having been trapped in the medical machinery for weeks, were - Peter Berz reports: "Alle Apparate abschalten!" - "All instruments off!"
"In his last "official" lecture something unexpected happened. Kittler received during his life-time standing ovations, after free speeches and within more or less buttoned up situations. He was already very, very fragile. His hair was white, not grey anymore, and his hands were trembling, constantly. On the last day of his teaching, sadly, there were no flowers given to him. Nobody stood up to give him a standing ovation. Nothing like that. I forgot that, too. Nevertheless, what he probably wished to happen occurred just on this last day - as a gesture: Two very young female students pulled their bras from beneath their clothes and threw it towards him! Wow! Instead of long-lasting applause, standing ovations, or flowers, he actually got what he wanted: They got his message! Being is female..."
