Wider die „Culturbrille“ – Versuch, Hartmut Böhmes „Perspektiven der Kulturwissenschaft“ auszuweiten

Abstract

Abstract The following comment attempts to expand Böhme’s „Perspectives of Kulturwissenschaft“ from a cultural anthropological viewpoint. It argues for the reflection on a Eurocentric bias of Kulturwissenschaft (termed Kulturbrille by Franz Boas), specifically its fundamental narrative of modernity, as well as its prevalent preference for the semiotic sign. Using participant observation as an illustration, the comment suggests to first critically examine the various notions of modernity from the perspective of the ‚other‘ (usually imagined to exist outside modernity); secondly, to complement the preoccupation of Kulturwissenschaft with semiotics and reprensentations of the mind by the phenomenological dimension of human experience and the body (‚Leib‘), in order to increase the discipline’s analytic potential.