The Passion for the Whole: Interpreted Modernity or Modernity as Interpretation

Abstract

KONRAD KOSTLIN delivered the present essay as his inaugural lecture at the University of Vienna, Austria, on June 27, 1995, where he accepted a chair in Volkskunde in the fall of 1994 and the directorship of the Institute for Volkskunde/ Ethnologia Europaea. An inaugural lecture is a quasi-ritual occasion in European academies and can be an opportunity to inform one's colleagues throughout the institution about one's work and the place of one's discipline. Kostlin chose to utilize the opportunity in precisely this manner; his passion for the whole is an eloquent, extremely reflexive, and in stretches ironic statement that comes to terms with the nature and role of our field in the late 20th century. While the intellectual lineage of Volkskunde differs from that of American folkloristics, and while K6stlin's frames of reference do not always overlap with those of an American readership, his essay is an inordinately valuable complement to the disciplinary self-examination underway in North America. K6stlin was born in 1940, studied Volkskunde and Sociology in Tiibingen and Munich, received his doctorate in 1967 (in Munich) and his habilitation in 1973 (in Kiel). From 1981-1989, he held a professorship for Volkskunde at the University of Regensburg; from 1989-1994 he was director of the Ludwig-Uhland Institut fuir empirische Kulturwissenschaft in Tiibingen, from whence he moved to Vienna. His major contributions to the field have appeared in the form of articles on themes ranging from social history to folklorism, regionalism, and more recently the ideology of ethnicity, many of which are referenced in the present translation.