| Fellowship: Intercultural Studies Fellow |
| Affiliation (host institution, host scholar): College of Fellows (Center for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Studies), hosted by Dr. Niels Weidtmann |
| Stay in Tübingen (from – until): 2021 – 2022 |
Research Project: The Foreigner of Languages: Heidegger and Waldenfels at the Encounter of the Arabic World My project explores the role that foreign language plays in the constitution of the foreign as such. The main questions I investigate are the following: Is the foreign language one form of foreignness among others or does it have a privilege by virtue of which it distinguishes itself from other types of foreignness? What are the implications of a foreign language for the matter of belonging? And, finally, what are the theoretical consequences of the encounter with the manner in which another cultural realm than our own conceives alterity? The research I lead is divided, thus, into a conceptual part on one hand, in which I pursue these questions through a critical reading of the works of Martin Heidegger and Bernhard Waldenfels. On the other hand, my project aims to pursue this philosophical research by bringing into a dialogue our philosophical concept of the foreign and the way in which the Arabic world conceived it with regard to language in the early epoch of Islam. In the aftermath of this endeavor, I develop a hermeneutical analysis of this dialogue, asking whether the words designating the “foreign”, the “stranger” and the “alien” are mutually translatable from one culture to another. My goal is to find out if a foreign language only reveals us a form of alterity among others or if it leads us to acknowledge a “structural” form of historicity, that touches upon the very phenomenon of the foreign (das Fremde) itself. Thus, by means of addressing different figures of the foreign, I try to think the contemporary intercultural situation, on the one hand, and to gain a horizon for a future research on the problem of the foreign in the modern and contemporary Islamic space, on the other. |
| Research Areas: Phenomenology, Contemporary French philosophy, Greek philosophy, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies |
| Contact: madalina.guzun@cof.uni-tuebingen.de |
| Activities at the College of Fellows: Member of the Focus Group 'Intercultural Studies' |
| About: My study in philosophy began at the Universtity of Bucharest (Romania) (2008 – 2011). After an Erasmus semester (2010) at the University of Bourgogne (France), I graduated with a Bachelor thesis on Heidegger and Plato. Throughout the Master’s program Erasmus Mundus Europhilosophie (2011 – 2013) I then studied at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaures (France), Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil) and Charles University in Prague (The Czech Republic). The Master’s thesis laid the foundation for my book Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence. A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014). Throughout my academic endeavor, as well as through the lived experience of dwelling in foreign languages, my research crystallized itself around the question of language. The doctoral thesis that I carried out in a co-tutelle at Paris-Sorbonne University and Bergische Universität Wuppertal (2013 – 2017), Thinking about λόγος and Translation in Martin Heidegger and beyond (originally in French), was supervised by Prof. Peter Trawny and Prof. Emmanuel Cattin, and it was awarded the highest degree, Summa cum laude (Paris, November 2017). Thereafter I worked as a researcher (2018 – 2020) in the project Finitude and Meaning. Phenomenological Perspectives on History in the Light of the Paul Ricœur – Jan Patočka Relationship, in collaboration with Prof. Ovidiu Stanciu and Dr. Paul Marinescu at the Institute of Philosophy Alexandru Dragomir (Bucharest), and I began my teaching activity at the University of Bucharest (2019 – 2020). At the same time, I engaged in a new field of research through the Master’s program (2019 – 2021) The Islamic Space: Societies, Cultures, Mentalities (Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest). Currently (2021 – 2022) I am working on the research project The Foreigner of Languages: Heidegger and Waldenfels at the Encounter of the Arabic World, as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the College of Fellows, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. |
| Personal Website: https://phenomenology.ro/current-members/ |
