Research Areas: Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Intercultural Philosophy, African Philosophy, Structural Philosophy, Philosophical Anthropology, Philosophy of Science

niels.weidtmann@cof.uni-tuebingen.de

00497071-2977242

The Society for Intercultural Philosophy (GIP) was founded in 1992 as a non-profit organization and now has members from all over the world who work together on the topic of intercultural philosophy. While philosophizing we think that it is important to expand the lenses of one's own cultural conditions in order to work systematically and historically in mutual exchange with the philosophical reflections of other cultures (and our own).

To this purpose, the GIP and its partners regularly hold conferences and congresses. The discussion is also conducted in numerous publications. The GIP members also share their research on interculturality in lectures, research and in discussion groups

Website of the GIP
Recordings of GIP Lectures

Videos of the Keynote Lectures

The serious impacts of climate change have urgently put the notion of human interaction with nature on the political agenda. This reflects the realization that humans are in the process of destroying their own livelihoods. While politics, however, is primarily concerned with obstructing the destruction, current European philosophy of nature, amongst other lines of endeavor following on from German Idealism, seeks to trace back the notion of reason in nature. Meanwhile, in the area of environmental and animal ethics, thought is being given to a fundamentally different approach to the engagement with nature. In addition, particularly in the field of sociology of knowledge, attention has recently been drawn to the profound shock of the current climate crisis on the understanding of human's self-image in modern times. What the various answers to this shock have in common is that they want to reassess the relationship between people and their environment, things, nature and technology. Such a re-measurement goes beyond political action as it is evident, that in the history of European-Occidental philosophy the sphere of the political itself from ancient times has been understood as distinct from nature. The Aristotelian understanding of man as a zoon politikon is based on the fact that man is capable of legislating himself his own laws while the scope of such autonomy cannot reach the heteronomously determined laws of nature. This approach can still be found in the 20th century, for example, in Hannah Arendt’ political philosophy. Therefore, the demand for the re-measurement of the relationship between man and nature is not only a question of political action, rather above all it is a question of ‘the Political’ in contrast to ‘the Natural’. Precisely for this reason, merely ascribing an agency of its own to nature and things, will still fall short as it only increases the circle of those who participate in the sphere of political action. The inquiry about ‘the Political’ and ‘the Natural’ goes deeper and concerns philosophical thinking in the European-Occidental tradition in its foundations.

This is where the intercultural criticism has to commence the current struggle as call for renewal of the understanding of nature with respect to the thinking of non-European cultures and epochs. In recent years, corresponding works have been created primarily with respect to Buddhism and in recognition of the Latin American experience. The conference would like to build on this work, but also invites the contributions of other natural experiences of other philosophical traditions. Moreover, the importance of an intercultural experience of nature will be explored. If it is the case that the relationship between human beings and nature presents itself differently in the various approaches, then this plurality is more than just a matter of different conceptualizations of nature; then the human reality as a whole is affected and thus the question of the relation of the different approaches to each other will be emerged. Responding to such inquiries directly concerns the political dimension of nature.

Workshop "Kenosis and Its Ethics in a Contemporary and Intercultural Perspective"
7–8 February 2024, University of Tübingen
Organisation: Dr Norihito Nakamura, PD Dr Niels Weidtmann

Neue Aula, Room 236

Theme:
Today, we humans are living in excesses: Information, population, production, and consumption surpass any previous point in our long human history and the global movement of people, goods, and money still continues to escalate. Since the 19th century, each nation state has devoted itself to increasing its own wealth in imperialistic competition, and educated people to conform to that nationalistic discipline. However, suffering from multiple crises, our global society seeks for a new life-form completely different from our previous one, which could be grounded not in growth and triumph, but in reducing and discarding. In other words, we need an alternative “weak” image of the human being capable of humility and negation, rather than a “strong” image of the human being oriented toward growth and overcoming.
What, then, is this “weak” ethical way of life? In this workshop, we aim to explore this ideal through the concept of “kenosis.” Kenosis is derived from the words of the Bible in the Letter to the Philippians, and refers to the act of humility in which Jesus renounced his immortality and eternity, and dared to die in the form of a slave. In the field of theology, since Luther, this has been variously considered as an important motif underlying the “theology of the cross,” which emphasizes the finitude of God rather than the “theology of glory,” which emphasizes the omnipotence of God.

Since the late 20th century, when we became more aware of the environmental crisis, the threat of nuclear war, the negative consequences of colonialism, and gender inequality throughout human history, this concept of kenosis has been widely considered in relation to contemporary issues beyond the narrow confines of Christian theology. (I) For example, within theology or religious studies, Salie McFague (1933-2019) focused on kenosis as an ethical way of life to critique contemporary consumerism and proposed the kenotic Christianity as the new figure of religion in climate change. (II) In the field of contemporary philosophy, Gianni Vattimo (1936- ) placed kenosis at the center of “weak thought,” his own project to criticize metaphysics. Emmanuel Levinas and Hans Jonas also observed the possibility of a dialogue between Christianity and Judaism within the concept of kenosis. (III) From an intercultural perspective, Japanese philosophy of the latter half of the 20th century can also serve as a point of inquiry. For example, Kazoh Kitamori (1919-98), one of the leading theologians of postwar Japan, seriously reflected on the catastrophes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thoroughly criticized conventional Christianity from the standpoint of “theology of the cross.” Kitamori drew inspiration from the Kyoto School, particularly his teachers Keiji Nishitani and Hajime Tanabe. His influential work, The Pain of God (1946), is said to have influenced Jürgen Moltmann, credited with sparking the contemporary renaissance of kenosis. This narrative reveals the practice of a philosophical dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, as well as between the West and the East. 

What kenosis teaches us is that, to survive this crisis, we must learn to give up, abandon, be unable, rather than to gain, triumph or overcome. Such a message is not only actual but also traditional. In this workshop, conducted in collaboration with scholars from diverse fields and nations, we strive to investigate contemporary challenges from a foundational vantage point, employing the dialectic of orthodoxy and innovation. Consequently, might not the ideals of kenosis empower us to illuminate the essence of past philosophies and religions in a novel light, contextualized within the milieu of the contemporary crisis? Moreover, could this novel interpretation not also unite philosophers hailing from diverse cultural spheres and disciplines within the same hermeneutic horizon, thereby catalyzing the conceptualization of an alternative and ethical mode of existence?

View the detailed program here. 

Workshop "Eco-phenomenology: Exploring Eco-phenomenological Concepts and Theories from and for Africa’s Ecological Lifeworld"
13–15 December 2023, University of Tübingen
Organisation: Dr Abiodun Afolabi, Dr Niels Weidtmann
Application Deadline: 24 October 2023

Theme:
The specific concern of phenomenology is to redirect our consciousness towards what is there in experience. It seeks to understand the fundamental structures of subjective experience in the world. However, its pioneers only make scanty theorizations of human’s experience in, and with, the natural environment. Only recently have scholars begun to apply the classical phenomenological thoughts of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas to address environmental issues like climate change that our world is facing (see Brown and Toadvine 2003; Peeters et al., 2015; Edelglass, 2020; Booth, 2021). The result is the beginning of a new discipline: Eco-phenomenology. 
The engagement of human’s experience in, and with, the natural environment and how the natural world (including its constituent species) shows up for them is central to eco-phenomenology. David Wood, one of the foremost eco-phenomenologists posits that eco-phenomenology can be thought of as a hybridization of phenomenological ecology and ecological phenomenology (Wood, 2019: 14). The sense here is that eco-phenomenology adopts the methods and insights of phenomenology and, at the same time, uses these methods, concepts, and insights for studying the interrelationship between organism and the world in its metaphysical and axiological dimensions.   
Despite the recent wave of eco-phenomenology, there is a surprising need for abundant eco-phenomenological perspectives from the African continent whose situated experiences are often connected to the flora and fauna of the natural environment. Of course, it is not the case that African philosophers do not adopt phenomenology as a method in their research. Many African scholars have used phenomenological approaches to reflect on the lived experiences of Africans to examine how such lived experiences can promote better awareness of their challenges and aid a meaningful response to these challenges (John Sanni, 2019: 2). However, such attempts have been common to theorizing socio-political realities (see Olivier 2023) but very sparse in addressing Africa’s socio-ecological experience (Rootaan, 2019) even now when human ecological consciousness needs to be taken seriously.
Although many African Scholars have reflected on Africa’s ecological crisis from ethical and socio-political standpoint (see Munrove 2009; Behrens 2014; Metz 2015; Kelbessa 2018; Fayemi 2016; Chimakonam 2017; Etieyibo 2017 and 2023; Chemhuru 2019; Ogude and Mushonga 2023; Samuel 2023), a vacuum is yet to be filled by applying phenomenology to the environmental crisis in Africa. This overlooked intellectual space is the focus of this workshop. It is expected at this workshop that both classical and contemporary phenomenological theories will be interpreted and engaged without eschewing analysis of the African social, political, and historical structures which imbue ecological experiences with intersubjective meaning-complexes that are necessary for philosophical understanding. This workshop aims to use eco-phenomenology to analyze African environment or nature-related problems in a bid to contribute important insights that would direct and infuse the habits of thought and action in the everyday lives of African people towards a transformative eco-consciousness.

The Workshop speakers may explore, among others, the following questions.
•    In what ways has the African environmental lived experiences provoke or promote attitudes of eco-dissonance, eco-disjunction, and eco-affectivity?
•    Are there peculiar emotional and felt significance of our relations with the more-than-human world in Africa?
•    How can we phenomenologically reconstruct the African environmental relations using eco-relational concepts that are co-adaptively engaging as well as attentive to Africa’s socio-ecological contexts?
•    How does the African experience of a particular place reveal essential experiential qualities of environmental relations?
•    Are there phenomenological theories from Africa that can help promote human-animal relational awareness?
•    What are the normative implications of adopting eco-phenomenology for addressing African environmental crisis with reference to environmental justice and environmental sustainability?

For further enquiries on the workshop, please send an email to:
Dr. A.P. Afolabi, Research Fellow, College of Fellows, Universitat Tubingen: 
abiodun-paul.afolabi@cof.uni-tuebingen.de 
 

View the detailed program here or download all abstracts here. 

19 – 22 September 2022
Organisation: Madalina Guzun

Full workshop abstract

Workshop programme

Further information about the workshop can be found here.

This hybrid workshop was organized by our Intercultural Fellow Dr Abbed Kanoor.

Languages: German, French, English

As François Laplantine (anthropologist) and Alexis Nouss (linguist) in their book Le métissage (1997) hinted at the richness of  this term in its historical (Mediterranean, Latin  America), linguistic (translation, creolization), cultural (Andalusia, Renaissance) and philosophical (Nietzsche, Bruno, Erasmus) aspects, they were in fact tracking the  Zeitgeist of late 1990s at the interface between cultural anthropology and philosophy with a fundamental question: what would a thinking look like that begins in medias res, instead of metaphysical quest for foundations or pursuing a systematic philosophy of principles? Their promising attempt – resulted later in their jointly published lexicon
Métissages. De Arcimboldo à Zombi  (2001) –  was not only in resonance with Serge Gruzinski’s major anthropological study in La pensée métisse (1999), but also deeply inspired by the specific philosophical era in French thought scene after 1960s (Deleuze and Derrida).

20 years later, there are rather concepts such as “interculturality”, “transculturality”, “global history”, “decolonization” and “globalization” in the foreground of cultural debates. The challenge is however still the same: how does philosophy relate to our cultural actuality? Does it play a methodological role i.e. preparing the theoretical frame of theories of culture? Does it react to it through a critical examination of the canonical historiography of philosophy and forms of thought? Evidently. There is however, in addition, the philosophical claim of cultural phenomena which has to be taken into account, that is when the cultural “in-between” opens the door to philosophical assessments; namely  both 1) when the descriptive approach of cultural anthropology to the phenomena of métissage leads to philosophical interrogations concerning the philosophy itself in its self-reflection, and 2) when thematizing the métissage in a phenomenological aspect involves the philosophical consideration of the lived experience expressed in literature, art  and narration of bodies engaged in this situation in a lively interaction with other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, cultural and literary studies.

Apart from the cultural anthropological debates around this term in the French speaking context, its thematization in the context of German-speaking intercultural philosophy  could serve the following dual goal: i) reviving the theoretical discussion about the métissage in a new interdisciplinary framework delimiting it from concepts such as “mixture”, “hybridity” and “synchronism” ; ii) contributing to the philosophical examination of the moment “inter-” through the complex concept of métissage which interrogates the limits of models such as assimilation and integration.

In a major challenge to African philosophy, this book demonstrates the importance of the universalisation question for every committed African philosopher. Rooted in Africa’s colonial legacy, the universalisation question challenges the African thinker to show how authentically African philosophical concepts and phenomena can be universally applicable in a globalising world.

In this highly original book, the author inserts the philosophy of consolationism into African philosophical discourse, constructing a unique philosophical system that is at once African and universally relevant. The book engages major African and Western philosophers of diverse ideological leanings in a compelling dialogue that announces the future of world philosophy as one of interculturality, in which a common philosophical horizon is forged out of the cultural diversities of the world for the edification of humanity in a continually changing world.

This book will be an important read for researchers in the fields of African Studies, intercultural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and existentialism.

In: Coquereau-Saouma, Elise; Raveh, Daniel; Miller, Dor (eds.): Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya and the Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy. London: Routledge (forthcoming).

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. On the System of Conversational Thinking: An Overview
Jonathan O CHIMAKONAM 1-45

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.1

2. On the Distinction between Friedrich Hegel’s Dialectics and the Logic
of Conversational Thinking
Emmanuel OFUASIA 46-62

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.2

3. Decolonising Method in the Age of Transdisciplinarity: A Case for
Conversational Thinking
Isaiah NEGEDU 63-78

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.3

4. Conversational Thinking as a Method of Conceptual Decolonization
Lindokuhle SHABANE 79-106

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.4

5. Applying Conversational Thinking to the Problem of Xenophobia in
Multicultural Societies
Lucky Uchenna OGBONNAYA 107-126

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.5

6. Euclid” Must Fall: The “Pythagorean” “Theorem” and the Rant of Racist
and Civilizational Superiority - Part 1
Chandra Kant RAJU 127-156

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.6

7. Applications of Conversational Thinking: The Role of Collective Action
in Merging Contexts
Leyla TAVERNARO-HAIDARIAN 157-174
https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i1.7

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. An Application of Conversational Thinking to the Problem of Racial
Discrimination in South Africa
Diana OFANA 1-17

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.1

2. Conversational Thinking as an Alternative Theory of Development
Enyimba MADUKA 18-41

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.2

3. Transhumanism in Africa: A Conversation with Ademola Fayemi on
His Afrofuturistic Account of Personhood
Amara Esther CHIMAKONAM 42-56

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.3

4. Is there a place for Conversational Thinking (CT) in Europe?:
Germany/Austria in Perspective
Christiana IDIKA 57-75

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.4

5. The “Pythagorean” “Theorem” and the Rant of Racist and
Civilizational Superiority – Part 2
C. K. RAJU 76-105

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.5

Conversations
6. Conversational Thinking, Logic, and the Making of Meaning
Bruce JANZ 106-123

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.6

7. Taking on the Conversation: Unresolved Tensions in
Conversationalism as a System
Chad HARRIS 124-131

dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.7

214 pages, 978-3-7873-4105-4.

With contributions by Niels Weidtmann and our Fellows in Intercultural Studies Eveline Cioflec and Abbed Kanoor.

Becker, Ralf, Bermes, Christian, Westerkamp, Dirk: Editorial.

Cioflec, Eveline, Weidtmann, Niels: Einleitung. Belonging - Zugehörigkeit

Kimmich, Dorothee: Belonging – Zugehörigkeit und Eigentum. Eine prekäre Verbindung

»Belonging« is usually discussed in the context of social participation. However, the English »belonging« also associates – similar to the German word ›zugehörig‹– the aspect of possession and property: it is also about »belongings«. In the following, various examples from religion, politics, literature, and film will be used to discuss the narratives that intertwine social belonging and material possession and reveal as well as conceal their (neo)mythical connection.

Gehrlach, Andreas: Die Zugehörigkeit der Dinge zu den Menschen

Western Culture knows only a single judicial concept of ownership: private property. Private property meaning, all things belong to people in the same normalized way. A closer look reveals that our relationship with things is more complex than that and confirms a gradual belonging of things to persons that stretches from an organic or intimate property to things being only vaguely attached to persons. This essay tries to outline this plural concept of ways of owning.

Cioflec, Eveline: Vom zugehörigen Selbst. Narrative der Gemeinschaft

In my paper I discuss belonging to a community as a lived experience aiming at interrogating with Hannah Arendt the dynamics of constituting or reshaping communities through action. The ungraspable »we« of communities allows for both constraining narratives and initiating new forms of belonging as a response to the need to belong. Acting together creates communities which can overturn the often painful experience of belonging to unbearable social units.

Kanoor, Abbed: Gezähmte Schizophrenie. Eine philosophische Analyse von Zugehörigkeit und kultureller Ich-Spaltung

Our time as the age of fragmented cultural ontologies, acceleration, and ongoing socio-cultural transformations is the age of the quest of belonging par excellence. My paper deals with this quest out of a singular culturally situated perspective – the work of the Indologist and comparative philosopher Daryush Shayegan (1935–2018) – which despite its singularity hints at a general hypothesis: the recognition of a tamed cultural schizophrenia can be an inspiring model of belonging for our time.

Rieger-Ladich, Markus: Tertium non datur. Über Gewalt und Zugehörigkeit

The books by Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon can be interpreted as testimonies of the struggle for belonging. With their rich descriptions of growing up in poverty, of shame and degradation, they make an important contribution to the analysis of orders of belonging. Educational institutions play a significant role in this. In this way, Ernaux and Eribon shed light on the mechanisms through which belonging is created or denied.

Grabau, Christian: Umkämpfte Zugehörigkeit. Ralph Ellison und das Recht des Künstlers, seine Vorfahren zu wählen

»[W]hile one can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives, one can, as artist, choose one’s ›ancestors‹.« These words lead to the heart of a dispute between Ralph Ellison and the Dissent editor Irving Howe in the early sixties which had an impact far beyond literary criticism and scholarship. From this well documented controversy we can learn something about both the power of attributions of belonging and the art of evading them.

Hilt, Annette: Ein Zuhause, das mehr als Heimat ist. Phänomenologische Überlegungen zur Zugehörigkeit

My contribution interrogates how to conceive belonging and how to clarify conceptual connotations of this and other concepts as ›home‹ or a ›dwelling in a place‹ according to their meaning for orienting our social life and identities. Methodically, I start with the phenomenological consideration of ›operative concepts‹ and how these might be reflexively brought into work with experiencing loss of belonging, negation of a home to stay in, and infraction of identity as they are expressed in personal life-stories.

Weidtmann, Niels: Zugehörigkeit als Menschenrecht. Eine phänomenologische Intervention

Based on her own experience of long years of statelessness, Arendt demands that the right of the individual to belong to a political community be recognized as the only human right. However, while the »right to have rights« can serve as a regulative idea, belonging that respects an individual’s personhood can neither be decreed nor granted but must have constitutive meaning for the individual. In the article, belonging therefore is described as different ways of a human’s being-in-the-world or simply as different ways of experience.

Stoellger, Philipp: Von der Theodizee zur Religiodizee. Zur neuen Lust an der Religionslosigkeit

Dzwiza-Ohlsen, Erik Norman: Deixis – Grundzüge einer phänomenologischen Anthropologie des Zeigens. Deixis als Praxis zwischen Berührung und Begriff

Hauck, Christian: Fortschritt. Skizzen zu einer absoluten Metapher

Schmidt, Stefan W.: Phänomenologie der Räumlichkeit und die Gestaltung des Sozialen. Entwurf einer Topologie des Social Design

van der Walt, Johan: Recht, Poesie und liberale Demokratie. Überlegungen zu Voßkuhle, Kohlhaas und Kleist

Kritik

Sophia Gräfe: Noch einmal nachdenken. Tierforschung für Philosophen (Martin Böhnert, Methodologische Signaturen. Ein philosophischer Versuch zur Systematisierung der empirischen Erforschung des Geistes von Tieren)

Arne Klawitter: Die Erfahrung des Fleisches und die Hermeneutik des Begehrens. Michel Foucaults vierter Band von »Sexualität und Wahrheit« (Michel Foucault, Die Geständnisse des Fleisches)

Nikola Mirković: Anerkennung als Autorität (Alexandre Kojève, Der Begriff der Autorität)

Johannes Röß: Krisenhaftes Denken. Erkundungen zu Georg Simmels Philosophie und ihrer Wirkung (Gerald Hartung/Heike Koenig/Tim-Florian Steinbach (Hrsg.), Der Philosoph Georg Simmel)

Volker Schürmann: Bekennender Anti-Reduktionismus (Thomas Fuchs, Verteidigung des Menschen. Grundfragen einer verkörperten Anthropologie)

In: Taliaferro, C.; Goetz, S. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119009924.eopr0049

Philosophy East and West, vol. 71 no. 4, 2021, p. 1-7. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/pew.2021.0076.

In a world where philosophy has become "global" and yet is mainly written by scholars educated and/or writing in "top" universities, where syllabi must become more "inclusive" yet conform to the same academic style, Daya Krishna's philosophy is distinctively refreshing and thought-provoking.1 Professor at the University of Rajasthan (Jaipur, India), prolific author, unremitting correspondent in journals, letters, and dialogues, anti-conformist regarding the norms of Western academia and irreverent toward the "inalterability" of the philosophical Indian traditions, Daya Krishna's creative and daring philosophical spirit is paid homage to by Daniel Raveh (Tel-Aviv University) in his book, Daya Krishna and Twentieth-Century Indian Philosophy: A New Way of Thinking about Art, Freedom and Knowledge.

Paderborn: Mentis.

Verantwortung: Dieser Begriff prägt derzeit viele aktuelle Debatten in Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft. Das Buch versucht eine Präzisierung des Begriffs, indem es die Ausgestaltung von Verantwortung im Werk und Wirken bedeutender Persönlichkeiten wie Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, Ernst Bloch, Emmanuel Levinas, Max Weber und Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker nachzeichnet und seine besondere Relevanz in Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft reflektiert. Angesichts einer sich rasant wandelnden Welt mit zentralen Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel und Migration, aber auch Digitalisierung und Forschung zu Künstlicher Intelligenz stellt sich die Frage nach der Verantwortung immer dringlicher.

Hawò, vol. 1, fevereiro de 2021, p. 1-32, https://www.revistas.ufg.br/hawo/article/view/65663.

A música nos Andes é parte integrante da vida das pessoas, das suas cosmologias, estéticas e do seu sentido de pertencimento a uma coletividade e de uma posição em contextos específicos. Os estudos dessa região também descrevem a música como uma força poderosa na criação e consolidação de alianças, capaz de atribuir uma “assinatura” local para cada grupo, atraindo estrangeiros para determinadas regiões. O objetivo deste artigo é discutir as concepções musicais indígenas e as práticas relacionadas à produção musical não humana, bem como a fetichização de sua alteridade radical em um cenário saturado pelo extrativismo nos Andes peruanos contemporâneos.

InterCultural Philosophy, Journal for Philosophy in its Cultural Context, Nr. 1 (2020): Special Issue, Kulturen und Methoden. Aspekte interkulturellen Philosophierens, 2020, pp. 181-191.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93435-8

Exploring indigenous life projects in encounters with extractivism, the present open access volume discusses how current turbulences actualise questions of indigeneity, difference and ontological dynamics in the Andes and Amazonia. While studies of extractivism in South America often focus on wider national and international politics, this contribution instead provides ethnographic explorations of indigenous politics, perspectives and worlds, revealing loss and suffering as well as creative strategies to mediate the extralocal. Seeking to avoid conceptual imperialism or the imposition of exogenous categories, the chapters are grounded in the respective authors’ long-standing field research. The authors examine the reactions (from resistance to accommodation), consequences (from anticipation to rubble) and materials (from fossil fuel to water) diversely related to extractivism in rural and urban settings. How can Amerindian strategies to preserve localised communities in extractivist contexts contribute to ways of thinking otherwise?

Sophia, Volume 57, Issue 3, September 2018, Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0674-5.
Introduction by Coquereau-Saouma, Elise; Freschi, Elisa: "Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Why It Is Worth Taking Up the Challenge?"

In: Sophia, Volume 57, Issue 3, September 2018, Springer, pp. 489-500.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0674-5.

The demand for the recognition of non-Western philosophy has often brought about the opposition of substantialized entities such as ‘India’ and the ‘West,’ which has nourished the drifts of nationalistic rhetoric. As a decolonizing process but also as a deconstruction of nationalistic revivals, it is necessary to investigate the presuppositions involved when defining ‘Indian philosophy’ in these post-colonial demands for recognition. Considering that the understanding of what is ‘Indian philosophy’ and its claim for recognition is a prerequisite for its reception, I focus in this paper on analyzing the problems of reception of post-colonial Anglophone Indian philosophy. What is it today that prevents the reception of Anglophone Indian philosophy in Indian academics and in the global world? Leaving aside the insufficient integration in Western structures of non-Western philosophies, I focus here on the internal difficulties of Anglophone Indian philosophy in India today. I suggest that the following interrelated obstacles prevent a global reception: the language, in terms of disparity of linguistic communities; the conditions of distribution and diffusion of the philosophical material; the historical rupture in the forms of transmission of knowledge; regionalism or fragmentation into micro-groups; and finally, the complexity of the situation of utterance or enunciative context, namely, the difficulty for Indian philosophers to answer the question: to whom are we speaking?

In: Coquereau-Saouma, Elise; Gurjanov, Filip: "Mediality and Interculturality", AUC Interpretationes Studia Philosophica Europeanea (Vol. VIII/2/2018), Charles University, pp. 120-126.

Reihe Interkulturelle Philosophie, Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Das Bild ist ohne Zweifel ein interkulturelles Grundphänomen. In verschiedenen kulturellen Kontexten finden sich stets bestimmte Formen und Praktiken bildlicher Darstellung, die sich zudem als Ausdruck der jeweiligen Welt- und Selbstansichten lesen lassen. Zugleich drängen Fragen nach universalen Strukturen der Bildlichkeit und der Bildwahrnehmung in den Vordergrund. Damit verweisen das Kulturelle und das Bildliche in spannungsreicher Form aufeinander. Dieser Band unternimmt einen ersten Brückenschlag zwischen Ansätzen der Bildtheorie und der interkulturellen Philosophie und liefert damit auch neue Zugänge zu aktuellen bildethischen und bildpolitischen Debatten.

Die HerausgeberInnen
Mag. Sergej Seitz, MA ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Philosophie der Universität Wien.
Dr. Anke Graneß ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Philosophie der Universität Wien.
Prof. Dr. Georg Stenger ist Inhaber der Professur für Philosophie in einer globalen Welt und Interkulturelle Philosophie am Institut für Philosophie der Universität Wien.

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Volume 9, Number 3, Winter 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/706777

New York, Oxford: Berghahn.

Drawing on fieldwork from diverse Amerindian societies whose lives and worlds are undergoing processes of transformation, adaptation, and deterioration, this volume offers new insights into the indigenous constitutions of humanity, personhood, and environment characteristic of the South American highlands and lowlands. The resulting ethnographies – depicting non-human entities emerging in ritual, oral tradition, cosmology, shamanism and music – explore the conditions and effects of unequally ranked life forms, increased extraction of resources, continuous migration to urban centers, and the (usually) forced incorporation of current expressions of modernity into indigenous societies.

In: Culture and Dialogue, Volume 5 No. 2 (2017), Brill, Leiden, pp. 173-209 (doi 10.1163/24683949-12340032).

This essay debates the way Daya Krishna reinterpreted some dialectic elements of classical Indian philosophy, with a special focus on “dialogue” and “counterposition.” The essay subsequently analyses the consequence of this reinterpretation on contemporary Indian philosophy.