Genealogies and Challenges of Transcultural Studies

Bernd Fischer

doi:10.3390/h6010004

Abstract

My introductory essay discusses some of transculturalism’s enduring conceptual challenges from the perspective of the history of German cultural and political theory. I am particularly interested in the discursive space between Immanuel Kant’s individualism and Johann Gottfried Herder’s and Moses Mendelssohn’s concepts of cultural identity. My hope is that such a discussion can enrich some of our current questions, such as: Have culture studies placed too much emphasis on difference, rather than on commonality? Can a renewed interest in the cosmopolitan individual surpass the privileged position of academic or upper-class internationalism? Can concepts of transculturality avoid the pitfalls of homogenizing politics or overstretched individualism? After mentioning a few challenges to current conceptions of transculturalism that may arise in the wake of recent developments in the natural sciences, I end my remarks with a brief example of a possible intersection of literary studies and science. The essay engages three topics: (a) the question of culture; (b) transcultural participation; and (c) transcultural empathy and the sciences.

Highlights

My introductory essay discusses some of transculturalism’s enduring conceptual challenges from the perspective of the history of German cultural and political theory
His concerns about a functioning public sphere would soon be eclipsed by the muddy realities of radically different power politics—i.e., the distinctly unenlightening media campaigns for and against the French Revolution, followed by wickedly deceptive strategies within the pro- and anti-Napoleonic propaganda wars, and, the censorship decrees after the Congress of Vienna, the idealistic passion of Kant’s account has survived to this day
There is no room for culture; the one time its name appears, we find it in a list of things that we should not do, namely falling for master discourses of ‘a new way of thinking, a culture, a vision of the world’; for that would imply a ‘return to the most dangerous traditions’

Summary

The Question of Culture

When Immanuel Kant presented in his Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment (1784) the notion of a self-enlightening public, he was notably battling the specific political constrictions of late. If there is anywhere in Kant’s political essays space for a constructive role of culture, it can most likely be located in the vicinity of his ideas about transcultural understanding, reciprocal recognition, and the promotion of a set of judicial and civic principles, which lie at the core of his design of a society that is to enable competitive personal growth and individual autonomy His brand of transculturalism stands in dynamic friction with two contemporaneous conceptions of culture that are still with us: (a) culture as an expression of a people’s identity, which exists primarily as a new subject and methodology of scholarly inquiry and has in the 18th century become part of the academic public sphere; and (b) cultural politics—the construction of a people as an audience (Publikum) through language-bound definitions and delineations of a national public sphere that would latently be engaged on the opposing side of Kant’s transcultural project. A particular culture can and should become more refined, but it cannot end, as it is for Mendelssohn as much (or perhaps even more so) a part of society’s engine of progress, as the competitive striving of autonomous individuals is for Kant

Transcultural Participation

Transcultural Empathy and Literary Imagination