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

Thema:
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?

Das vollständige Programm gibt es hier. 

Dr. Stefano Floris (Institute of Biblical Archaeology)
"History of a Punic city, seen from its Tophet: a Sardinian perspective"

Abstract
Child incineration sanctuaries, conventionally known as “Tophet”, are typical of some of the most important central Mediterranean Phoenician colonies. Due to the varied nature of the sources available for their study (e.g., literary, epigraphic, archaeological, bioarchaeological), such sanctuaries constitute a fascinating topic, ideal for the implementation of an interdisciplinary research method aimed at reconstructing the complex ritual actions performed at these sites.
Central to the present talk was the "city" value of the Tophet. These religious institutions played a fundamental role in the lives of the cities where they were placed. As a rule, the activity of the Tophet is centuries old and knows no interruption, from the city's foundation until its end, usually coinciding with the gradual integration of the Punic community within the Roman system.
Thus, the Tophet archaeological contexts are a privileged and fundamental source for the study not only of religious beliefs and practices but also of the history of their Punic cities.

Bionote
After studying Archaeology at the University of Bologna, Stefano Floris earned his doctorate at Ca' Foscari University, Venice, with a thesis on Tharros’ Tophet. He participated in archaeological missions in Sardinia, Armenia, Tunisia, and Lebanon and he is co-director of the “Tophet of Bithia Archaeological Project” led by Ca' Foscari University, Venice. Since June 2022 he has been a Humboldt postdoc fellow at the University of Tübingen. His research focuses on Phoenician burial customs between the Levant and the central Mediterranean.

Dr. Riccardo Marin (Tübingen AI Center)
"Connecting the (Digital) Dots: Studying relations in 3D geometries for human virtualization"

Abstract 
Geometry surrounds our lives, and we recognize ourselves as part of the 3D world. While we intuitively interact with it, the study of geometry has tickled scholars since the dawn of civilization. The advent of computers opened dramatic opportunities like the simulation of surgeons, assisted architecture design, or navigating imaginary limitless universes. It’s not surprising that, as human beings, we reserve to ourselves an important spot in geometry studies. Modern technologies can acquire, digitize, and imitate human appearance at a stage that is indistinguishable from reality. The industry has a substantial bet on this: embodying ourselves in a blended experience between real and digital worlds promises to change our perceptions and how we relate to each other. To this end, tools to establish analogies between geometrical data (and hence human bodies) are crucial: deciding what is similar, what is different, or, namely, what is in correspondence are fundamental research questions to complete our understanding.

Bionote
Riccardo Marin has obtained his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Verona. He has been a Post Doctoral researcher at Sapienza University of Rome, and now at the AI Center of the University of Tübingen in the Real Virtual Humans Group. He is a Member of the ELLIS Society, a Humboldt Fellow, and is now funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. His research focuses on 3D Shape Analysis, Geometric Deep Learning, and Virtual Humans.

Junior-Prof. Dr. Jacky Kosgei 
"Decanonisation Research Methodologies: Working with Oral, Non-Europhone Texts"

Abstract
Ngugi wa Thiong’o argued that the lower esteem with which oral material was historically treated became ‘the basis for expelling some cultures from history and complex thoughts, consigning them to a place in hell’. Moving beyond this much discussed albeit inconclusive debate on the tension between orality and literacy, this talk took a more productive path, asking, what happens to theories of community formation when previously hidden, ignored, and suppressed oral knowledge is unearthed? Taking as a case in point the history of Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Jacky Kosgei thought about the implications of such a project, showing the theoretical and narrative possibilities that reside in an attempt to re-figure the colonial archive. The aim was to make manifest the constellation of ideas, truths, and realities that emerge when new perspectives are brought to light. 

Bionote
Jacky Kosgei is a junior professor of Global Epistemologies at University of Tübingen in Germany. Her interdisciplinary research which is located at the intersection of Atlantic & Indian Ocean literary, cultural, historical and anthropological studies, explores African and Afrodiasporic connections from the 15th century to the present. 

Dr. Hyunjin Kim:
"Acetate to Protein: Conversion of Simple Chemicals to Feeding the World"

Abstract
Edible microbial biomass, known as single-cell protein (SCP), is a promising alternative to conventional food sources. However, most commercially available products use plant-derived sugars as a substrate to produce SCP, which does not circumvent traditional agriculture. Using the simple organic compound acetate to cultivate SCP is a promising alternative. Some technologies recently emerged for converting carbon dioxide and renewable power via hydrogen gas into acetate, supporting the circular economy. In a recent proof-of-concept study, the two-stage power-to-protein (P2P) process, our lab could show microbial protein production from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae with biologically converted acetate as a sole carbon source. This study focuses on increasing the applicability of SCP production from acetate by optimizing the second stage process by growing yeast with high protein content and good nutritional profiles that are harmless for human consumption.

Bio
Hyunjin Kim is working as a postdoc in the Environmental Biotechnology Group at the University of Tübingen with a Humboldt fellowship. Her research topic is developing processes for making valuable products (such as fuels, chemicals, and protein) from waste materials. She received my Ph.D. from Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea, working on the chain elongation process for producing caproic acid from useless biomass. She is currently researching protein production from acetate that is produced by fixing carbon dioxide with renewable energy.

Marika Pulkkinen:
"Slut-Shaming – Ancient and Modern: Sexual Slander, Shame, and Honor in the Biblical Texts"

Abstract
Shame and honor dynamics is sometimes attached to the societies which are not viewed as cherishing equal rights to all genders. Moreover, there is a tendency to label crimes occurring in certain ethnic and religious contexts in which women are victims of their conjugal partners or family members stemming from honor and shame dynamics. In this vein, they are labelled as “crimes of honor,” whereas the domestic violence occurring in the context of religious and ethnic majority in Western societies is more often labelled as “crimes of passion.” In this presentation, I will problematize the distinction between the “crimes of honor” and the “crimes of passion” by comparing the biblical texts depicting legal sanctions for women suspected of illicit sexual acts to contemporary legal studies in which women are victims of conjugal and family violence. In addition, I will compare the ancient textual material to contemporary examples in which hate speech using sex vocabulary (so-called slut-shaming) is utilized to belittle and marginalize the others.

Bio
Marika Pulkkinen holds a PhD in Theology in the field of Biblical Studies (June 2020, University of Helsinki). Her current project Evoking Shame, Honor, Desire, and Disgust through Vocabulary of Sex Work in the Ancient Jewish Sources and in the New Testament applies perspectives of emotion studies to examine the affect-laden vocabulary of sex work in the biblical texts. In Tübingen, as a visiting scholar, she works as an associate member of the ERC-project QaSLA and as a Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture and Society.

Dr. Eva Falaschi
"Natural Histories in a Global Perspective. Pliny, Oviedo and America: An Ancient Encyclopaedia as a Model to Transfer and Transmit Knowledge"

Abstract
When the Europeans reached America in 1492, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (c. AD 70) was, in Europe, the model for describing nature. How did it influence the first descriptions of the nature of America published in Europe? I will investigate the dynamics of transferring knowledge from the American to the European continent, by focusing on the works by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1476- 1557), who was one of the first Europeans who went to America and wrote about it. In particular, I will ask to what extent characteristic Plinian methods of acquiring and transmitting knowledge (including autopsy, use of local sources, anecdotal narrations, selection and organization of information, aesthetic and religious values of nature, concepts of wonder and otherness) shaped the standards, structures, concepts, and methods that made the knowledge of the nature of America accessible to the European, Latin-influenced culture in the early modern period.

Bio
Eva Falaschi holds a diploma and Ph.D. in archaeology from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and a Master of Arts in Classics from the University of Pisa. From 2014 to 2020, she was a research fellow at the Scuola Normale, working on the reception of Greek art in Roman Imperial literature and, in particular, in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. Between 2021 and 2022, her project on art treatises and artists’ biographies in ancient times was funded by the Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard University), the James Loeb Gesellschaft / Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (München), and the Getty Research Institute. Her Global Encounters research aims at a historical analysis of global knowledge formation. It examines the impact of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia (c. AD 70) on the understanding and global transmission of America’s natural history in the 16th century. 

Dr. Asia Kalinichenko (Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry)
"Food safety and quality assessment using gas sensors and chemometrics: the edible oils case"

Abstract
This lecture was dedicated to the project on the development of alternative sensor-based methods for analyzing food quality and safety, with a focus on the case of edible oils. 
The production of vegetable oils and fats is the one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the global food market. The contemporary speeds and production volumes necessitate a reconsideration of traditional analytical chemistry approaches to perform more effective monitoring of edible oil quality and safety at all stages of the entire food supply chain. The implementation of new sensor-based methods will facilitate fast and efficient analyses without the need for chemical reagents and solvents. In addition, deep machine learning algorithms, incorporating elements of artificial intelligence, combined with SMOX sensors featuring various operation modes, can process data sources to suggest optimized sensor array for targeted gas analytes, as well as enhance the sensitivity and selectivity of methods based on cross-selective sensors. 
The simplicity and affordability of these innovative methods, based on micro gas sensors, make them suitable for application in various settings, including small enterprises, large mills, and regulatory authority labs.

Bionote
Currently, Asia Kalinichenko is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry of Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, supported by a fellowship from Philipp Schwartz-Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Additionally, she holds the position of associate professor at the Department of Foodstuff Expertise at the National University of Food Technology (NUFT) in Kyiv, Ukraine.  
In 2011 she received a B.Eng. degree at the Faculty of Chemistry at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Ukraine, followed by an M.Tech. degree from NUFT in 2012. In 2021, she defended her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry. Her research interest focuses on gas sensors and their application for food analysis, food chemistry, data mining and deep machine learning in chemistry. 

Dr. Smith Babiaka (Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine)
"Natural Product-Based Discovery of Novel Lead Compounds From Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems"

Abstract
Natural products (NPs) are known to be a rich source of novel drug leads with unique mechanisms of action. The African continent with Cameroon inclusive has a rich biodiversity with a long history of the use of medicinal plants in the treatment of diseases. Plants and marine sponges have been extracted and analyzed for centuries for medicinal purposes. Several interesting NPs have been isolated from these living organisms and screened against a series of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) which burdens the population. This lecture will focus on the valorisation of NPs from African medicinal plants, isolation, structure elucidation, and bioactivity testing of compounds against a series of NTDs. He also intends to use molecular modelling to explain the structure-activity relationship of some potent compounds isolated from plant species. Next, he would conclude by using molecular networking with GNPS to identify natural products from marine sponges collected off the west coast of Africa.

Bionote
Smith B. Babiaka is a Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Buea where he was awarded a PhD in Chemistry in March 2019. Since June 2022, he is a Georg Forster Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Forster-Bayer Research Fellow. He is working in the research group of Prof. Dr. Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt and Dr. Chambers C. Hughes at the University of Tübingen. He has been awarded the ARISE Intra-ACP mobility grant, AGNES junior research grant, MINESUP research grant, ACS best poster ward among others. His previous research has been focused on natural product drug discovery of novel lead compounds from nature. He is a member of ACS, RSC, EFMS-YSN & INPST and others. He is a reviewer of manuscripts from Phytochemistry, Frontiers in Natural Products, ChemBioChem, and Natural Product Research and others. He has about thirty-two peer-reviewed journal publications. 

Workshop "Eco-phenomenology: Exploring Eco-phenomenological Concepts and Theories from and for Africa’s Ecological Lifeworld"

Organisation: Dr. Abiodun Afolabi, Dr. Niels Weidtmann

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 explored, 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?

View a detailed program here or download all abstracts here.  

Dr. Tetjana Midjana (Institut für allgemeine Rhetorik)
"Die Kriegsrhetorik von Wolodymyr Selenskyj und Wladimir Putin und ihre besonderen Merkmale"

Abstract
Der aktuelle Krieg gegen die Ukraine ist nicht nur ein Vernichtungs- sondern auch ein Informationskrieg. Um gegen den russischen Propagandaterror Widerstand zu leisten, wendet sich der ukrainische Präsident Wolodymyr Selenskyj mit täglichen Videoansprachen an sein Volk sowie an die Parlamente und Menschen verschiedener Länder, um den Zusammenhalt der Welt gegen den Aggressor zu stärken. Selenskyjs Reden in Kriegszeiten scheinen sich durch einen hohen persuasiven Charakter auszuzeichnen, denn sie zeigen große mediale Wirkung. Hier lautet die rhetorikanalytische Frage: Was macht diese Reden so wirksam? Das gleiche öffentliche und wissenschaftliche Interesse gilt den Kriegsreden von Russlands Präsidenten Putin, weil es sich um die Reden des Aggressors handelt. Die Textsortenkategorie „Rede“, als Beratungs-, Gerichts- und Lobrede, kommt aus der Rhetorik. Diese in Europa nur in Tübingen mit einem Universitätsinstitut vertretene Wissenschaft bietet das beste Instrumentarium für die Analyse der Kriegsreden, deren Besonderheit darin besteht, jede Kriegsrede als Handlungsinstrument zu untersuchen. Unter rhetoriktheoretischer Perspektive ist die Realisierung von persuasiven Strategien der beiden Protagonisten zentral.

Bionote
Tetjana Midjana studierte deutsche Sprache und Literatur an der Universität Lwiw in der Ukraine. Von 1999 bis 2004 war sie Doktorandin bei Prof. Joachim Knape am Seminar für Allgemeine Rhetorik der Universität Tübingen und promovierte zum Thema „Periphrase“. Seit 2005 ist sie Dozentin am Lehrstuhl für Deutsche Philologie an der Universität Lwiw (Ukraine). 
Seit 1. April 2022 hat sie einen Forschungsaufenthalt am Seminar für Allgemeine Rhetorik. Das Projekt wird von der Universität Tübingen und der Philipp Schwartz-Initiative der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung finanziert.

Prof. Raluca Rădulescu (Deutsches Seminar)
"Koloniale Seefahrten in der deutschen Literatur"

Abstract
Seefahrt und Kolonisation sind Phänomene, die in der deutschen Geschichte und Literatur 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts in gegenseitiger Potenzierung zum Ausdruck kommen. Auf ihren Seefahrten müssen die literarischen Figuren nicht nur politische, sondern auch kulturelle Grenzen durchqueren und überwinden. So bietet sich die hohe See als Projektionsfläche europäischer Eroberungsphantasien an, welche die ganze Welt in Anspruch nehmen und somit alle Grenzen zu überschreiten begehren. Doch auf der Seefahrt muss der Einzelne sowie das Kollektiv auf unerwartete Hindernisse und somit an Grenzen stoßen – seien es widrige Naturverhältnisse, Seuchen, aber auch unberechenbare Begegnungen mit kulturell Anderen – die Pläne und Vorstellungen einer Revision unterziehen.
So liefern Meer und Meerfahrt im kolonialen Zusammenhang den Anlass zu einer ästhetischen und ferner hermeneutischen Herausforderung der Bejahung, Hinterfragung oder Kritik überlieferter europäischer Bilder und Expansionsvorstellungen. 
Die Seegeschichten lassen darüber hinaus einen Diskurs der fließenden nationalen und kulturellen Grenzen entstehen, was in der maritimen Globalisierung schon ab der Antike aufkommt und heute (auch im Kontext der Flüchtlingsströme und deren Seenöte und Schiffbrüche) einen ausgeprägten Aktualitätsbezug aufweist. 

Bionote
Raluca Rădulescu ist Professorin für Interkulturelle Germanistik am Institut für germanische Sprachen und Literaturen an der Universität Bukarest (Rumänien). Ihre Forschungsinteressen sind: interkulturelle Literatur, Exilliteratur, Migrationsliteratur, Kulturtheorie, Lyrik der Moderne und Intermedialität. Derzeit ist sie Stipendiatin der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung mit einem Projekt über koloniale Seereisen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.

Dr. Àlex Mas-Sandoval
"The genetic footprint of racial and gender hierarchies"

Abstract:
Most American populations descend from indigenous Americans, European colonisers and sub-Saharan African slaves. However, the admixture process resulting from the colonisation of the Americas is constrained by socioeconomic and cultural stratification. 
By analysing the DNA fragments of each individual that are inherited from each of these three ancestral populations, we quantify how much the mating has not been random related to the genetic ancestry proportions of males and females.
In this way, we reconstruct how interactions between racial and gender hierarchies shaped population stratification since the colonisation of the Americas. We challenge the oversimplified understanding that mestizaje reduces population stratification: a high degree of mixture cannot translate into a decrease in inequality if it occurs with strongly gendered patterns. Finally, we analyse the role of racialised phenotypes in stratifying the population beyond the effect of socioeconomic stratification. 
Overall, we show how social stratification leaves a footprint in the genetic structure of human populations and how, by studying it, we can reconstruct the evolution of inequalities throughout human history.

Bionote:
Àlex Mas-Sandoval is a population geneticist that studies how evolutionary processes driven by social structure and cultural changes impact the genetic diversity of populations. He got his PhD at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF), in Barcelona, and at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre. There he focused on the reconstruction of the precolonial demographic history from admixed populations of Brazil. Then, during a Postdoc at Imperial College London, he studied how social hierarchies constrain the mating patterns and the admixture dynamics of the populations of the Americas. As a postdoctoral researcher at Università di Bologna, he is focused on understanding the socioeconomic factors that drive assortative mating in these populations.

Dr. Mas-Sandoval is currently a short-term visiting researcher at Universität Tübingen in the framework of the Global Encounters platform, aiming to disentangle how social inequalities and population stratification have impacted a wide range of populations across time and space.

Prof. Dr. Gregor Paul (Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie):
„Sind nicht alle Menschen Menschen? Ziele, Methoden und Inhalte Interkultureller Philosophie“

Abstract: 
Kulturfundamentalisten ausgenommen, bezweifelt kaum jemand, dass es nichts gebe, das alle Kulturen verbindet oder schließlich verbinden könnte, sind doch alle Kulturen auch Menschenwerk. Und kaum jemand akzeptiert einen Kulturimperia­lismus. Kaum jemand will Eurozentrismus oder Sinozentrismus. Aber so wichtig solch allgemeine Erklärungen für jede Art interkultureller Philosophie sind, so sehr bedürfen sie ausführlicher und detaillierter Entfaltung. Es geht darum, genau, unmissver­ständ­lich und in handhabbarer Weise anzugeben, wie Fehler zu vermeiden und Ziele zu realisieren sind. Wie sind kulturelle Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede festzustellen und zu erklären? Welche Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede sind wichtig? Welche nicht? Warum oder warum nicht? Und vor allem: Was lässt sich aus solchen Fest­stellungen und Erklärungen folgern, ja lernen?

Wie ist das wohl höchste Ziel jedes interkulturellen Engagements, eine ge­waltfreie interkulturelle Verständigung, zu verwirklichen? Anders gesagt, das Ziel, eine Kultur zu etablieren, die die ganze Menschheit umfasst, Frieden erhält und den Menschenrechten genügt, ohne die berechtigten Ansprüche einzelner Kulturen auf Erhalt ihrer Besonderheiten zu vernachlässigen?

Im Vortrag ging es vor allem um Methoden, die allgemeingültige Hypothesen erlau­ben. Diese wurden durch Beispiele aus der Philosophie der Menschenwürde und Menschen­rechte illustriert. Zugrunde lagen den Ausführungen u.a. die „Einführung in die Interkulturelle Philosophie“ (WBG 2008) und „Philosophy in the History of China“ (Bochum: Project-Verlag 2022).

Bio:
Lesen Sie mehr über Prof. Dr. Gregor Paul hier.

"TamilThanmai: A historical Ethnography of caste and gender in public political lives in Tamil Nadu, India"

Abstract:
This work is a historical ethnography of Sulur, a town in Coimbatore district of Tamilnadu, India. Through in-depth interviews and archives, both personal and public, of textual and visual sources, Ponni Arasu has evolved an analytical framework from which to understand everyday public political lives. With a focus on the 1950s to 70s, before the consolidation of state power and political discourses in Tamil Nadu, she traced public politics from the perspective of the everyday lives of its ordinary members, all of whom are men. Based on this narrative she has identified elements of what she terms TamilThanmai. TamilThanmai, as she proposes, is a historically grounded analytical framework which describes the essence of public political lives that provided a way of being and sense of self for all those who lived it. Her research is a historical ethnography of and through TamilThanmai. Her work analyses the past rigorously with all its complexity in order to imagine and play a role in creating an egalitarian and just society in the future. 

Bio:
Dr. Ponni Arasu is a feminist researcher, historian, activist, legal practitioner, translator and theatre artist hailing from Chennai and currently based in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. She is trained in History at the University of Delhi, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Toronto. Her academic work is on historical ethnographies of contemporary India, with specific focus on social movements such as the Dravidian movement and the women's movement(s). Her PhD research has led her to propose a theoretical framework and methodology called TamilThanmai. She has done research in India and Sri Lanka on the realities of those marginalised on the grounds of their gender, sexuality, caste, class, language, labour, ability, ethnicity, religion etc. for the past twenty years. Her research emerges from and feeds back into movements for social change that she is a part of. She has taught entire courses and guest lectures in the disciplines of history, South Asian studies, Tamil studies, women and gender studies, Caribbean studies and anthropology at the University of Toronto - Canada, University of Minnesota - USA, University of Tubingen - Germany, the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, the Tata Institute of Social Studies, Azim Premji University and the University of Pune in India. She has been evolving pedagogic methods of teaching the history and contemporary realities of Sri Lanka with a focus on rigorous research methodology and critical thinking in non-formal and yet consistent teaching spaces to Tamil-speaking students from all over Sri Lanka. This has taken the form of the “Ezhuval: for young women and social change” that she has designed and co-teaches, hosted at the Church of the American Ceylon Mission, Batticaloa. For the past three years she has undertaken research projects in Sri Lanka including on women farmers' collectives; lives and movements for change of women living with disabilities in eastern Sri Lanka; the present realities of LGBTQIA+ individuals and on the status of sex workers. She has produced theatre work with collaborators in India and Sri Lanka on a range of issues which are grounded in using the arts to further the important process of making realities of the marginalised visible and accessible to all. Ponni is also a trained expressive arts therapist practicing primarily in Tamil among women and queer folks from marginalised communities in India and Sri Lanka. She is the Arts and Catalyst Fellowship holder for 2023 at the Studio for Movement Arts and Therapies in Bangalore. She is currently a Global Encounters fellow at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tubingen pursuing research on the life of the goddess Mariamman among descendants of largely Dalit indentured workers in Port of Spain, Trinidad and among rural communities in Tamilnadu. She hopes to bring her proposed concept of TamilThanmai as theory and method to this work.

Dr. Keyvan Allahyari (Englisches Seminar)
"Abdulrazak Gurnah's Oceanic Border Thinking"

Abstract
In this talk, Dr. Keyvan Allahary explored the Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By the Sea (2001) as a critique of the normative understanding of the border as having a singular, prohibitive function for the refugee, and instead read it as a call to register the border as a moving and permeable formation. What he calls oceanic border thinking conveys Gurnah’s optic into the imbrication of littoral and land zones, and the effect of proliferation of biopolitical technologies associated with various iterations of colonial and postcolonial bordering, including partitioning, arbitrary detention, deportation and expulsion. Oceanic border thinking enables one’s sense of the world not only in water but onwards into the land, whether it is in Africa, England, and continental Europe. This method helps exploring how cartographic, literary and imaginative conceptions of border as observed from the Indian Ocean, bears the potential to trouble easy categorisations of borders and the histories associated with them.

Bionote
Dr. Keyvan Allahyari (PhD, Melbourne 2019) is Postdoctoral Humboldt Fellow at the University of Tübingen and the University of Potsdam, and the incoming Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the author of Peter Carey: The making of a Global Novelist (Palgrave 2023). His articles have appeared in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literature (forthcoming), ARIEL (forthcoming), The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel, Australian Humanities Review, Antipodes, Journal of Australian Studies, and JASAL. 

Dr. Laurie Atkinson (Englisches Seminar)
"Co-Creativity in Early English Literary Print"

Abstract
Who were the makers of English literature before Shakespeare? And why don’t we talk about them? There were myriad agents involved in the production and consumption of English literary texts during the first decades of printing in England: the patrons, printers, booksellers, et al. who mediated between, and collaborated with, the author and the reader. The collaborative energy which characterised literary production was harnessed in this period to convince an expanding and diversifying readership of the value of new literary texts in English, but it contradicts the post-Romantic notion of the sovereign author as the unmediated and sole source of a text. This talk examines the hugely popular collaborative collection, A Mirror for Magistrates (1559), together with earlier English literary publications, as evidence for the diverse, interactive, but today too often ignored literary agents that made them. It shows how different agencies were emphasised or obscured depending on their perceived vendible qualities and makes a case for the importance of co-creativity to the formation of English literature as we know it today.

Bio note
Laurie Atkinson completed his PhD at Durham University in 2021. He afterwards provided research as an MHRA Postdoctoral Research Associate for the new Cambridge University Press edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Laurie is now a Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Tübingen, where he works on early English literary print. His monograph, Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision: Skelton, Dunbar, Hawes, Douglas, is scheduled for publication with Boydell & Brewer in March 2024.

Vortrag von Prof. Lynne Tirrell (University of Connecticut) im Rahmen der Science&Innovation Days der Universität Tübingen, gefolgt von einer Podiumsdiskussion mit Dr. Rolf Frankenberger (Universität Tübingen, Institut für Rechtsextremismusforschung) und Felix Steinbrenner (Stabsstelle „Demokratie stärken!", Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg)

Abstract zum Vortrag: 

Sprache kann auf vielfältige Weise und in unterschiedlichem Maße toxisch sein und eine Vielzahl verschiedener Schäden verursachen. Der Vortrag konzentrierte sich auf die toxischen Dimensionen rechtsextremer Rhetorik, um erstens ihre Mechanismen zu verstehen und zweitens, um Wege zu identifizieren, ihr entgegenzuwirken und den Widerstand dagegen zu fördern. Prof. Tirrells Ansatz nahm diskursive Praktiken anstelle von einmaligen Sprachakten in den Blick und betonte normbildende Sprach-Muster, die beeinflussen, wie wir einander behandeln, wie gut wir leben können und wie wir als Bürger:innen fungieren. Was können wir als  Bürger:innen tun, wenn eine Gesellschaft in der alltäglichen Sprache und in politischen Äußerungen von einem Trommelfeuer des Hasses bedrängt wird? Das wurde im Vortrag gemeinsam erkundet, mit einem klaren Blick auf das, was auf dem Spiel steht.

Siehe auch: https://www.sidays.com/events/toxische-sprache

#SIDays23
"Resilienz. Gemeinsam arbeiten wir dran."

Gastvortrag von Prof. Dr. Jan Willem Duyvendak (Direktor des Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam)
"The Return of the Native. Navigating between nostalgic nativism and hopeful liberalism"

Zu Beginn des Wintersemesters luden wir alle internationalen Fellows und interessierte Universitätsmitglieder zu unserer Semestereröffnung ein. Duyvendak hat, aufbauend auf seinem gemeinsam mit ihm verfassten neuen Buch The Return of the Native (Oxford University Press, 2023), den außergewöhnlichen Aufstieg des Nativismus in liberalen Umfeldern untersucht und dabei besonderes Augenmerk auf nativistische Narrative gelegt, die Islamophobie, Rassismus, Populismus und Nostalgie miteinander verbinden. Er hat den Anstieg des Nativismus in Frankreich, den USA und den Niederlanden erörtert und dabei auffällige Ähnlichkeiten und kleine Unterschiede herausgestellt. Im Anschluss kamen Professorin Dorothee Kimmich und Professor Boris Nieswand auf dem Podium mit Professor Duyvendak ins Gespräch, und das College of Fellows stellte seine Tätigkeiten und Angebote für internationale Wissenschaftler:innen vor. Der abschließende Empfang bot die Möglichkeit, sich bei einem Glas Wein mit anderen Fellows und Tübinger Wissenschaftler:innen auszutauschen und zu vernetzen.

Über Jan Willem Duyvendak:
Jan Willem Duyvendak ist Distinguished Research Professor für Soziologie an der Universität von Amsterdam (UvA). Seit 2018 ist er auch Direktor des Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences  an der Königlich Niederländischen Akademie der Künste und Wissenschaften (NIAS-KNAW). Im Jahr 2021 wurde er zum Mitglied der Königlich-Niederländischen Akademie der Künste und Wissenschaften (KNAW) und 2022 zum Mitglied der American Academy of Arts and Sciences gewählt. Weitere Informationen hier: www.jwduyvendak.nl

Abendvortrag von Professorin Rita Felski
"How Not To Talk About Experience"

Im Oktober 2023 begrüßte das College of Fellows Professorin Rita Felski in Tübingen. Rita Felski war im Rahmen eines New-Horizons-Fellowships an der Universität Tübingen zu Gast.
Am Mi, 25. Oktober 2023 hielt Rita Felski den öffentlichen Abendvortrag "How Not To Talk About Experience".
Das College of Fellows lud alle Angehörigen der Universität und die interessierte Öffentlichkeit zur Teilnahme ein.

Abstract:
Why do standard textbooks of literary theory avoid the concept of experience? And why is the turn to literary experience now an accelerating trend? This talk looks to recent German theory, especially Hartmut Rosa’s account of the phenomenology and sociology of resonance, as a resource for literary critics interested in rethinking experience in relational and worldly terms.

Über Professorin Rita Felski:
Rita Felski ist John-Stewart-Bryan-Professorin für Englisch an der University of Virginia und Niels-Bohr-Professorin an der University of Southern Denmark (SDU). Sie ist eine führende Wissenschaftlerin in den Bereichen Ästhetik, Literaturtheorie und Kulturwissenschaften, feministische Theorie, Moderne und Postmoderne und hat etwa die Entwicklung der Postkritik und die Diskussion der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) Bruno Latours in den Literaturwissenschaften maßgeblich geprägt.
Felski hat u. a. The Limits of Critique, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, The Gender of Modernity, Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture, Literature After Feminism, das Blackwell Manifesto Uses of Literature und Rethinking Tragedy veröffentlicht und ist ehemalige Herausgeberin von New Literary History. Insbesondere The Limits of Critique wurde vielfach rezensiert und besprochen. Vergleichbare Themen diskutiert der von ihr gemeinsam mit Elizabeth Anker herausgegebene Sammelband Critique and Postcritique. Hooked: Art and Attachment, das der Frage nachgeht, wie und warum Kunstwerke uns fesseln, wurde 2020 veröffentlicht. Vor kurzem hat Felski die Arbeit an einem Buchprojekt über die neue Frankfurter Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die Literaturwissenschaften aufgenommen.

Prof. Rita Felski
New Horizons Workshop "Postcritique, Recognition, Life World"

Der Workshop bot die Möglichkeit, mit Rita Felski über ihre neueste wissenschaftliche Arbeit zu diskutieren. Er richtete sich an Teilnehmer:innen aus verschiedenen Disziplinen, insbesondere aus den Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaften, Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften.

“Rather than taking it for granted that a work gains its meaning in relation to a historical or political context that is being assumed by the critic, why not insist on its potential to transform what counts as a relevant context?” (Rita Felski)

Abstract:
Im Mittelpunkt des Workshops stand  die Diskussion von Aspekten der aktuellen Arbeiten Rita Felskis; die gemeinsam diskutierten Texte werden vorab an die Teilnehmer:innen.
Der Workshop umfasste drei Sitzungen. Die erste Veranstaltung war methodischen und theoretischen Voraussetzungen gewidmet; die zweite dem Thema „Recognition“ am Beispiel von Didier Eribons Rückkehr nach Reims; die dritte diskutiert ein Kapitel über „Life World“ und Magda Szabos Die Tür.
Im Rahmen des Workshops wurden Aspekte und Implikationen von Felskis Konzepten untersucht: Welche theoretischen Impulse lassen sich aus ihrer Neuausrichtung des kritischen und kreativen Vokabulars ableiten? Wie entwickeln ihre neueren Arbeiten das theoretische Feld der Postkritik weiter? Können Begriffe wie „Recognition“ und „Life World“ als Rekonfigurationen postkritischer Konzepte und Lektüre- und Interpretationsverfahren dienen? Wie tragen solche Rekonfigurationen zu theoretischen Verschiebungen innerhalb aktueller Debatten in den Geisteswissenschaften bei?

Programm:
Montag, 23. Oktober, 16.00-19.00 Uhr:
    Eröffnungssitzung mit einem einführenden Impuls von Rita Felski, gefolgt von einer Diskussion zu Theoriegrundlagen
    Dienstag, 24. Oktober, 16:00-19:00 Uhr:
    Impuls von Rita Felski, gefolgt von einer Diskussion zum Thema „Recognition“
    Mittwoch, 25. Oktober, 19:00 Uhr:
    Öffentlicher Abendvortrag unter dem Titel „How Not To Talk About Experience“
    Donnerstag, 26. Oktober, 16:00-19:00 Uhr:
    Impuls von Rita Felski und Diskussion zum Thema „Life World“ mit weiteren geladenen Gästen und einer Nachbereitung der Themen.

Besonders erwünscht war die Auseinandersetzung mit Forschungsfragen und -themen aus angrenzenden Bereichen, wobei ausdrücklich auch Bezüge zu eigenen Projekten hergestellt werden konnten. Der Workshop fand auf Englisch statt.

Über Professorin Rita Felski:
Rita Felski ist John-Stewart-Bryan-Professorin für Englisch an der University of Virginia und Niels-Bohr-Professorin an der University of Southern Denmark (SDU). Sie ist eine führende Wissenschaftlerin in den Bereichen Ästhetik, Literaturtheorie und Kulturwissenschaften, feministische Theorie, Moderne und Postmoderne und hat etwa die Entwicklung der Postkritik und die Diskussion der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) Bruno Latours in den Literaturwissenschaften maßgeblich geprägt.
Felski hat u. a. The Limits of Critique, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, The Gender of Modernity, Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture, Literature After Feminism, das Blackwell Manifesto Uses of Literature und Rethinking Tragedy veröffentlicht und ist ehemalige Herausgeberin von New Literary History. Insbesondere The Limits of Critique wurde vielfach rezensiert und besprochen. Vergleichbare Themen diskutiert der von ihr gemeinsam mit Elizabeth Anker herausgegebene Sammelband Critique and Postcritique. Hooked: Art and Attachment, das der Frage nachgeht, wie und warum Kunstwerke uns fesseln, wurde 2020 veröffentlicht. Vor kurzem hat Felski die Arbeit an einem Buchprojekt über die neue Frankfurter Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die Literaturwissenschaften aufgenommen.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro:
"Indigenous Multinaturalism form a Cosmopolitical Point of View"

Zur Lecture:
In his lecture, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro presented his scholarly work, which has set decisive impulses in anthropology and cultural theory. His concept of perspectivism, which is closely linked to the concept of “multinaturalism”, proved to be particularly stimulating for anthropological theory. 
Contrary to Western conceptualisations of naturalism, which regard nature as the objectively given, in Amerindian mythology humanity is the premise from which all kinds of animals, plants and things in their diversity emerge. This inwardly persisting human condition is common to all beings, whereas the bodily condition conveys different perspectives on the world: “non-humans see things [the same way] as ‘people’. But the things that they see are different” (Viveiros de Castro 1998). Thus, differences between species are due to their physical dispositions, while personhood is common to all living things, which is described by Viveiros de Castro as “multinaturalism”, a concept that is both irreducible to the distinction between nature and culture and transversal to the opposition of relativism and universalism. Assuming different natures, it is in a sense antithetical to the Western concept of multiculturalism, which assumes only one nature and different cultures.
This notion of multinaturalism implies a ‘cosmopolitical’ view, which Viveiros de Castro describes as follows: “What we could call the natural world, or “world” for short, is for Amazonian peoples a multiplicity of intricately connected multiplicities. Animal species and other species are conceived as so many kinds of people or peoples, that is, as political entities. […] What we call the environment is for them a society of societies, an international arena, a cosmopoliteia.” (Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s 2015)

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro ist ein international renommierter brasilianischer Anthropologe, bekannt für seine Arbeit zur Ethnografie der indigenen Völker des Amazonasgebiets und der Entwicklung einer dekolonialen Anthropologie durch Konzepte wie "kontrollierte Äquivokation", "Perspektivismus" und "Multinaturalismus". Er hat zahlreiche Bücher und Artikel veröffentlicht, darunter: "From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society" (1992); "Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism" (1998); "Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies" (2004); "Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation" (2004); "The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul: The Encounter of Catholics and Cannibals in Sixteenth-century Brazil" (2011); "Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere" (2012); und "The Ends of the World" (mit der Philosophin Déborah Danowski, 2016). 

Viveiros de Castro ist Professor für Anthropologie am Nationalmuseum der Bundesuniversität von Rio de Janeiro. Zuvor lehrte er an der École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, an der University of Chicago und an der University of Cambridge. 

Eleonora Bedin (Teaching@Tuebingen Fellow, Institute of Classical Archaeology, University of Tuebingen, Germany)
"The Ancient Mediterranean as a Global Stage: Tracing the Mother Goddess Across Borders"

Abstract:
The Ancient Mediterranean, characterized by interconnected shores and extensive networks, served as a vibrant global stage where diverse people, cultures, ideas, and religious beliefs converged. However, globalization in the region was not solely driven by mobility but also influenced by the Mediterranean’s geography, climate, and maritime sphere, which played a pivotal role in defining the characteristics of cults and deities.
The lecture delved into the intricate web of connections and interactions that spanned the Mediterranean region from the Bronze Age until the Hellenistic period, with a particular emphasis on the transmission and pervasive presence of the mother goddess archetype across borders. Drawing from mythological texts, epigraphic sources, and archaeological evidence, it traced the journey of the mother goddess from the Near East to the West, examining the mechanisms through which her cult spread, and her dependence from the human experience of the Mediterranean region.
Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of the complex dynamics between globalization, regional influences, and the worship of deities in the ancient Mediterranean. By examining the long durée of the mother goddess's journey and the cultural factors that shaped her worship, it provides a deeper insight into this significant historical era.

Bio:
Eleonora Bedin is a Teaching@Tuebingen Fellow at the Institute of Classical Archaeology, University of Tuebingen. With a strong emphasis on cultural identities and globalization in the Ancient Mediterranean world, Eleonora's research centers around exploring the dynamics of connectivity, religious patterns, and adaptation strategies. Her primary area of expertise lies in the Southern Levant, with a particular focus on Hellenistic Palestine. In her scholarly pursuits, she employs a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates various fields of study, including anthropology, epigraphy, archaeology, and literary culture. By integrating these diverse perspectives, she strives to gain a comprehensive understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics and historical transformations within the ancient world.

Dr. René Alberto Ramírez Gallegos (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México):
"‘Buen Vivir’ as an uchronic political horizon"

Abstract:
After a long and broadly participative constituent process, in 2008, Ecuador approved a new political Constitution where Buen Vivir or Sumak Kawsay was established as a social priority. The research contends that mainstream theories of well-being are insufficient to translate this social endeavor into practice, thus the need to establish a specific epistemic framework for the concept of Buen Vivir outlined in the Andean country. The research proposes the political socioecology of life as a theoretical, methodological, and empirical framework to examine, interpret, and dispute the realization of Buen Vivir in Ecuador. For this purpose, based on a critique that exposes the limitations of using money as an evaluator of well-being, the research applies the metric “time for a good life” as the unit of analysis. The measurement of time “well lived” has the advantage of being an ambivalent indicator; it is both empirical-factual and prescriptive-desiderative: it accounts for a fact and reveals a desire. The research shows how time well lived is characterized by the production and enjoyment of relational goods, a concept that allows us to address time distribution focusing on the time of existence / life; the time dedicated to the good life; the concentration or inequality of time well lived; geography and the time of time well-lived; the macro structuring of time for good life; the temporality of the Pachamama (nature’s sumak kawsay); and the impact of time on satisfaction with life. The conference ended by proposing a uchronic agenda for the good life.

Dr. Ramona-Elena Irimia: "Using herbaria to track biological invasions and plant response to climate change – a case study of Japanese knotweed"
Do, 29. Juni 2023, 12:00 Uhr s.t.

Abstract:
Biological invasions are among the most serious threats to biodiversity because they disrupt ecosystem processes and function. However, biological invasions are also large unplanned experiments across spatial and temporal scales that enable us to observe evolution in the wild and address many key aspects of global change. Herbarium records offer an excellent opportunity to examine the temporal and spatial characteristics of plant invasions since many of these invasions occurred during the past two-three centuries and are well documented in museum collections. These collections are a vast repository of botanical metadata including plant functional traits, phenology, plant-herbivore and plant-disease interactions and genetic data, allowing to model past processes and gain insights into the species responses to environmental and anthropogenic perturbations. Species of the genus Reynoutria (Japanese knotweed) are among the world’s worst invasive weeds. Native to SE Asia, they were introduced around the world ca. 180 years ago as garden ornamentals and later became highly invasive in Europe and North America. In this project, we genotyped hundreds of herbarium specimens of Japanese knotweed from the native and invasive range to reconstruct the species’ invasion history and evolutionary changes associated with invasiveness. We also measured spatiotemporal variation in leaf functional traits and leaf chemical defenses against herbivores. The findings will provide a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the invasion success of this species complex and potentially identify appropriate strategies for containment.

Bio: 
Ramona-Elena Irimia is a plant evolutionary ecologist at the Institute of Evolution and Ecology at University of Tübingen. Her work focuses on understanding ecological and evolutionary processes underlying species adaptation to changing environments. She uses invasive species as study systems and a combination of field, common garden experiments and genomics to investigate species resilience to climate change, invasive abilities and adaptive potential across native and introduced ranges. Recently, she started to explore historical DNA from museum collections to study the evolutionary history of invasive Japanese knotweed.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carola Lorea: "Covid Demons, Corona Goddesses and Online Rituals: Pandemic Research Modalities on a Post-secular Virus"

Abstract:
Viral contagion, a social relationship acting between bodies and across national borders, is a dramatic instantiation of global encounters. Thinking with a virus and its representations in diverse cosmologies, we developed CoronAsur: a collective research project that takes a global health crisis as a starting point to develop new forms of international collaborations that can democratize the scholarship on religion and disease and decenter Western narratives of Covid-19.
How does the digitization of ritual gatherings impact lived religion? In which ways has the enforcement of hygienic and ‘social distancing’ protocols changed the aesthetic, affective and material dimensions of religious communities? How are the mutual shapings of religion and society unfolding during a pandemic and in a post-pandemic world?
CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age is about to be released as a fully open access “phygital” volume that follows the documentation and analysis of the abrupt societal shifts triggered by the pandemic to understand current and future pandemic times, while revealing further avenues for research on religion that have opened up in the Covidian age.
The project founders and editors discussed transformations in religious communities’ engagements with media, spaces, and moral and political economies, documenting the dynamic range of ways the pandemic shaped, and was shaped by, religious people and their practices across Asia.

Vortragende:
Carola E. Lorea, Editor and Founder of CoronAsur, PI of the research project “Religion Going Viral”
(Junior professor of Rethinking Global Religion at the University of Tübingen)

Emily Zoe Hertzman, Editor
(Research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore)

Natalie Lang, Editor
(Research fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen)

Erica M. Larson, Editor
(Research fellow in the Religion and Globalisation Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore)

Konferenz:
"Discourses of Unity in Ireland and Europe"

Organisation:
Prof. Dr. Maurice Fitzpatrick (Gastprofessor in Irlandstudien im Wintersemester 2022/23) und Lehrstuhl für Neuere Englische Literatur an der Universität Tübingen

In dieser Konferenz haben in einer Reihe von Plenarvorträgen renommierte Sprecherinnen und Sprecher aus Irland und den USA die gegenwärtige Lage im Gefolge von Brexit und jüngeren historischen Entwicklungen analysiert, in fünf weiteren Sektionen wurden insbesondere Vertreter der Irlandstudien in Deutschland literarische und kulturelle Erscheinungsformen der Discourses of Unity diskutiert.

Die Veranstaltung fand auf Englisch statt und wurde begleitet von zwei Ausstellungen in deutscher Sprache: "Irland und die Geburt Europas" und "Into Europe: Irland und die EU". Beide Ausstellungen waren am Veranstaltungsort während der Pausen zugänglich.

Vollständiges Programm:  "Discourses of Unity in Ireland and Europe"

"Grenzräume" (Boarder Spaces)

Der Dokumentarfilm „Grenzräume“ (Border Spaces) befasst sich mit Grenzen und Grenzräumen in Brasilien und begleitet Personen, die ihre Erfahrungen mit und an Grenzen beschreiben. Der Film basiert auf der von Santos koordinierten soziologischen Forschungsarbeit „The Social Construction of Border Zones“. Die Studie sucht Perspektiven verschiedener Akteure zu ermitteln, die an den drei brasilianischen Grenzen in der alltäglichen Praxis in ihrer Arbeit Grenzen „machen“ – die Grenzen im Süden zu Argentinien und Uruguay; im mittleren Westen, im Grenzgebiet zu Bolivien und Paraguay, Region Corumbá; sowie im Norden, an der Grenze zu Bolivien und Peru, in der Region Brasileia und Assis Brasil, in Acre, einer Region, die von Einwanderung aus Haiti und mehreren afrikanischen Ländern geprägt ist.

Der Dokumentarfilm führt verschiedene Perspektiven zusammen: die derjenigen, die mit Grenzkontrollen befasst sind, wie Angehörige der Bundespolizei, Armee, Polizei oder des Internal Revenue Service; derjenigen, die Grenzen etwa für den Drogenschmuggel nutzen und aufgrund dieser illegalen Aktivitäten inhaftiert sind; derjenigen, die in Grenzregionen landwirtschaftliche Erzeugnisse produzieren; und die Perspektiven von Angehörigen der indigenen Bevölkerung, die vor der Kolonisierung des brasilianischen Territoriums durch die Portugiesen Grenzgebiete besiedelt haben. 

Im Anschluss an die Filmvorführungen wird der Regisseur Hermílio Santos einige der Forschungsergebnisse und die in dem Film dargestellten Erfahrungen und Perspektiven mit dem Publikum diskutieren. 

Über den Regisseur Hermílio Santos
Hermílio Santos (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasilien) ist Soziologe und Professor des Graduiertenprogramms in Sozialwissenschaften an der Schule für Geisteswissenschaften (School of Humanities) seiner Heimatuniversität. Santos ist seit 2018 Präsident des Research Committee „Biography and Society“ der International Sociological Association. Er arbeitete 2022 als Gastwissenschaftler am Centre for Film and Screen an der Universität Cambridge. 
2023 ist er erster Gastprofessor des Tübinger CAPES-Lehrstuhlprogramms, das auf einer Partnerschaft zwischen der brasilianischen Förderorganisation CAPES und der Universität Tübingen basiert; beteiligt sind auch das Baden-Württembergische Brasilien- und Lateinamerika-Zentrum und das Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies (ICGSS) der Universität Tübingen. Santos stellt in verschiedenen Formaten seine wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten und Filmproduktionen vor, in denen er sich unter anderem mit Themen wie Gewalt, Adoleszenz, Grenzen, Sklaverei und Gas- und Ölförderplattformen beschäftigt. 

"Infância Falada" (Geschichten von Transformation durch Dialog )

In "Infância Falada" begleitet Hermílio Santos soziale Projekte in den brasilianischen Bundesstaaten Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Ceará, Pernambuco und Minas Gerais, um herauszufinden, wie Kinder versuchen, das von ständiger Gewalt geprägte Umfeld, in das sie hineingeboren werden, zu verändern. Der Film basiert auf einer von Hermílio Santos koordinierten Forschungsarbeit, deren Ergebnisse eine intensive Gewalterfahrung der Kinder in den untersuchten Stadtgebieten aufzeigen. 

"Infância Falada" stellt verschiedene soziale Projekte vor, die auf unterschiedliche Weise den Dialog unter Kindern und mit Kindern und Jugendlichen als Alternative zur Gewalt im Alltag fördern. Es sind bewegende Geschichten von Jungen und Mädchen, die ihren Familien beigebracht haben, Konflikte durch Dialog zu lösen, und die davon träumen, mit Argumenten und Verhaltensbeispielen Frieden in ihre Nachbarschaft zu bringen. Die abschließende Botschaft ist ein optimistisches Szenario dieses von Kindern und Jugendlichen geführten Dialogs. 

Die Forschungen und der Film wurden von der Bernard van Leer Foundation finanziert, um Daten über die Gewalt zu erhalten, der Kinder in prekären städtischen Verhältnissen Brasiliens ausgesetzt sind. Die Ergebnisse werden in Projekten von Regierungen und sozialen Nichtregierungsorganisationen verwendet, um die Lebensbedingungen der Kinder zu verbessern.
 

Über den Regisseur Hermílio Santos
Hermílio Santos (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasilien) ist Soziologe und Professor des Graduiertenprogramms in Sozialwissenschaften an der Schule für Geisteswissenschaften (School of Humanities) seiner Heimatuniversität. Santos ist seit 2018 Präsident des Research Committee „Biography and Society“ der International Sociological Association. Er arbeitete 2022 als Gastwissenschaftler am Centre for Film and Screen an der Universität Cambridge. 
2023 ist er erster Gastprofessor des Tübinger CAPES-Lehrstuhlprogramms, das auf einer Partnerschaft zwischen der brasilianischen Förderorganisation CAPES und der Universität Tübingen basiert; beteiligt sind auch das Baden-Württembergische Brasilien- und Lateinamerika-Zentrum und das Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies (ICGSS) der Universität Tübingen. Santos stellt in verschiedenen Formaten seine wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten und Filmproduktionen vor, in denen er sich unter anderem mit Themen wie Gewalt, Adoleszenz, Grenzen, Sklaverei und Gas- und Ölförderplattformen beschäftigt.

A poetic and musical journey with Orpheus – the archetypal poet, musician and magus – from antiquity to the present day, from the enchantment of animals to ecological crisis

Poetry:   Luke Fischer
Violin:   Hong Yu Wong
Lute:      Niels Pfeffer

Orphic Elegy was a performance that alternated between music for violin and lute and readings of the five-part poem ‘Orphic Elegy’. This mythopoetic and philosophical poem reimagines the legends and teachings of Orpheus and travels from scenes in antiquity of Orpheus enchanting animals with his song and suffering dismemberment by the maenads, to the revival of Orphism in the Renaissance, to the atrocities of the twentieth century and the current period of ecological crisis and mass extinction. ‘Orphic Elegy’ is the opening poem of Luke Fischer’s book A Gamble for my Daughter (Vagabond Press, 2022); part of the poem also appears in Best of Australian Poems (2022).

Biographies:
Luke Fischer is a prize-winning poet and philosopher from Sydney, Australia. Fischer’s various books include the poetry collections A Gamble for my Daughter (Vagabond Press, 2022), A Personal History of Vision (UWAP, 2017) and Paths of Flight (Black Pepper, 2013), and the monograph The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the ‘New Poems’ (Bloomsbury, 2015). He is an honorary associate of the University of Sydney. www.lukefischer.net

Hong Yu Wong is a philosopher and musician. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and Head of the Philosophy of Neuroscience Group at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience. He studies the baroque violin with Mónika Toth, Richard Gwilt, Rachel Podger, and Simon Standage. He also does research on the philosophy of music and on musical cognition. With his friends, a mix of professional musicians and academics, he founded an early music ensemble, the Tractatus Musico-Philosophicus.

Niels Pfeffer studied guitar, lute, harpsichord, and basso continuo in Stuttgart, Freiburg, The Hague, and Basel. In 2021, he began his PhD and started working as a research assistant at the University of Tübingen. Niels teaches continuo and theorbo, while also serving as a harpsichord accompanist at the University of Music Stuttgart. He has been successful in numerous competitions and has performed with various baroque ensembles, such as La Cetra, Capricornus Consort, and the Bach-Stiftung St. Gallen.

Dr. Ritu Vij:
"De-Pathologizing Precarity"

Abstract: 
Figurations of precarity encompass multiple and conflicting registers of thought and feeling. Abjection, melancholia, resilience, or utopic lines of flight from the depredations of capitalism provide recognizable markers of the “age of precarity.” These conflicting figurations, however, carry shared pathologized mappings of precarity. Paradoxically, these mappings appear in the shifting terrain of reparative redress itself, in efforts to de-pathologize precarity. Converging on a disparate selection of cinematic images, art-work and literary texts on precarity in contemporary India, this paper explores the antinomies of a reparative aesthetics. I focus on Anamika Haksar’s Ghode ko Jalebi  Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon, (Taking the Horse to Eat Jalebis),  Arundhati Roy’s Ministry of Utmost Happiness and ‘slum art’ produced in Dharavi, Mumbai, now in worldwide circulation, as recent attempts to de-pathologize precarity. A principal aim of this exercise is to tease out the challenge of untangling precarity’s imbrication as concept and form with modernity writ large.

Bio: 
Dr Ritu Vij is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. Her primary areas of research and teaching are in political economy and international political theory. In the past few years, her intellectual engagements circle principally around the question and problem of precarity in the Global South, specifically the problem of recuperating precarity as an aesthetic form of life. She has explored heterotopias of homelessness through work produced by artists and rough sleepers in Tokyo, cinematic narratives of precarity in Japan and, more recently, responded, to aesthetic modes of ‘Precarious Writings’. Her current work, a book project, focuses on Dharavi, a shantytown in Mumbai, India, and its aesthetic production and circulation in the international. She is widely published in these areas. Among the publications most relevant to her talk on ‘De-Pathologizing Precarity’ are ‘The Global Subject of Precarity’ in Globalizations 2019, and an edited volume Precarity and International Relations, Palgrave 2021.

International Research Symposium Figurations of the Precarious: New Directions in Global South Studies

Am 3. und 4. Mai organisierte das ICGSS in Zusammenarbeit mit dem College of Fellows ein internationales Forschungssymposium zum Thema "Figurationen des Prekären - Neue Wege in den Studien des Globalen Südens". Es diente der Vorbereitung der Zusammenarbeit mit internationalen Partnern im Vorfeld der Bewerbung des ICGSS um einen Zuschuss für das Graduiertenkolleg "Figurationen der Prekarität im Globalen Süden" und führte die Reihe der Aktivitäten mit dem Gastprofessor auf dem CAPES-Lehrstuhl im Sommer 2023, Prof. Hermílio Pereira dos Santos Filho (PU-CRS), ein. Im Rahmen des Symposiums fanden zwei Keynote-Vorträge von Prof. Hermílio Santos und Dr. Ritu Vij (Aberdeen) statt, letzterer im Rahmen der Global Encounters Lecture Series.

Ein transatlantischer Dialog: Interkulturelle Perspektiven auf Führung im Hochschulwesen

Führung (leadership) an Universitäten umfasst verschiedenste Facetten, betrifft und verbindet unterschiedliche Gruppen – von Studierenden, Forschenden und Alumni über Hochschulleitung und Verwaltungspersonal zu Förderinstitutionen, staatlichen Einrichtungen usw. – und erweist sich als vielfältiges und wachsendes Feld für diverse Karrierewege.

Die Podiumsdiskussion brachte interkulturelle Perspektiven auf Führung im Hochschulbereich zusammen und widmete sich gleichzeitig Herausforderungen und Chancen, denen sich Führungskräfte in Deutschland und den USA gegenübersehen. An ihr wirkten Forschende, Alumnae der Universität Tübingen und Praktizierende aus verschiedenen Bereichen des Hochschulwesens mit, die Erfahrungen und Einblicke zu Themen wie Governance, Diversität und Inklusion, Innovation und Internationalisierung teilten. Die amerikanischen Diskutandinnen sind Stipendiatinnen des American Council of Education, die für eine Woche die Universität Tübingen besuchten. Das einjährige Stipendienprogram des ACE konzentriert sich auf die Weiterbildung von Führungskräften und institutionellen Wandel im akademischen Bereich.

Die Veranstaltung bot eine Plattform für den Dialog und Austausch von Ideen zu bewährten Praktiken, um die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Institutionen und Führungskräften aus beiden Regionen zu fördern.

Diskussionsteilnehmende waren:
Professor Frankie Augustin (South Carolina HBCU), Dr Courtney Dorrol (Furman University), Professor Dr Janet Ward (Yale)

Moderation hatte:
Professor Dr. Astrid Franke, Universität Tübingen

Unser Gastredner Hermílio Santos (Pontifícia Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasilien/CAPES Gastprofessor) ist der erste Gastprofessor des Tübinger CAPES-Lehrstuhlprogramms, das auf einer Partnerschaft zwischen der brasilianischen Förderorganisation CAPES und der Universität Tübingen basiert. Er stellte bei der Semestereröffnung wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten und Filmproduktionen vor, in denen er sich unter anderem mit Gewalt, Kindheit, Adoleszenz, Grenzen, öffentlicher Politik und den Erfahrungen verschiedener Generationen indigener Frauen im Süden Brasiliens beschäftigt. 

Professor Eric Nelson, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
"Daoist wuwei in the Anthropocene"

Abstract:
Wei wu wei 為無為 has been interpreted as indifference and inaction, minimalism and adaptability, and responsive resonance and releasement. Despite the depoliticization of wuwei as a mystical state, a flexible knack, or a reflexive flow, its early meaning was ethical, political, and social. In the Daodejing 道德經, wuwei concerns the art of rulership and the ways in which peoples and things “anarchically” organize and nourish themselves. “Nature” (ziran 自然) consists of the interactive self-patterning and participatory self-ordering of the myriad things (wanwu 萬物) correlated with wuwei and the shared nourishing of life (yangsheng 養生). Daoism has been criticized as opposing action vs. inaction, complexity vs. simplicity, culture vs. naturalness, hierarchical society vs. “primitive” freedom and equality. Its point is participatory relationality: it fosters simplicity in complexity, naturalness in culture, responsive attunement in activity, and reciprocal self-ordering. Daoist wuwei concerns the appropriate uses of things and technologies, indicating an alternative response to the Anthropocene.

Short Bio:
Eric S. Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has published on Chinese, German, Jewish, and intercultural philosophy. He is the author of Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2023), Daoism and Environmental Philosophy (Routledge, 2020), Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (SUNY Press, 2020), and Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Workshop im Rahmen der Focus Group 'Intercultural Studies'
Organisation: Dr. Olusegun Samuel

Abstract:
The question of sustainability has received attention in both academic and public domains. What is sustainability and how can we bring it about? With the hope of contributing to the existing understanding of and solutions to sustainability concerns, this workshop aimed to investigate and engage two important aspects of the question.

The first concerns theoretical-conceptual issues about sustainability. A theory is a lens through which we view, understand, and interpret our experiences. How we understand sustainability, for example, would influence the method we choose to achieve it. Given that a theory provides the justifications for our gaze and the reasons underlying our method and practices, scholars have raised the importance of developing a new theoretical lens that would provide a better understanding of sustainability. Many scholars, including Robert Bullard, J. Baird Callicott, Val Plumwood, Workineh Kelbessa, and Mogobe Ramose, challenge the dominant theoretical orientations (economic, religious, and political) about sustainability that place more emphasis on humanity, ignoring other beings and ecosystems. Holmes Rolston III and Richard Routley call for ‘a new environmental ethics’, which not only incorporates nonhumanity within our environmental-ethical gaze but also emphasizes the need for their continued existence. There is a concern that anthropocentric foci not only misrepresent the place of other beings but also hinder a plausible sustainability agenda. But how do we transcend anthropocentrism in a way that is possible for humanity to realize sustainability?

This workshop engaged theoretical problems about sustainability, including how we should understand sustainability, the roles of ethics and ontology in sustainability thinking, and methodological issues in framing sustainability. It looked at questions such as: Are there approaches to sustainability from the global South that challenges existing western conceptions? What valuable lessons do they offer?

The second involved practical human issues undermining sustainability. Increasing literature and debates on sustainability have identified political disagreements as core to negotiating positive change in how people use the environment they share with others. Irmelin GramHanssen et al, for example, have drawn attention to the conflict between indigenous communities and their colonizers, thereby emphasizing how oppressive structures shape and impact sustainability plans. These structures manifest in various ways, including colonialism, racism, genderism, and speciesism, which all threaten those in the weaker group. This reflects the hegemonic dominance of a people, class, gender, and species over another. While there are solutions in the literature and public policies to these problems, this workshop will investigate how we might build what Felix Wagner and Marcus Andreas describe as a culture of sustainability that does not merely incorporate the economic, social, ecological, and cultural aspects of life but also disrupts the antagonistic hierarchies and privileges in an illuminating way. This workshop considered works that speak to practical sustainability issues, including solutions to environmental colonialism, injustice, speciesism, gender gap, and cultural apathy to non-anthropocentric practices. Considering sustainability from both theoretical and practical perspectives would help enrich our engagement with socio-ecological problems.

Organisation: Dr. Abbed Kanoor

Keynote speakers: 
Mark J. Sedgwick, Angus Nicholls, Patrick McGuinness

Workshop-Abstract: 
The development of cultural anthropology and the rise of cultural studies are signs of a global introspection, as if the memory of the world is involved in a state of retrospection instead of generating metaphysical systems. This turning point has rightly been called a „cultural turn” with devastating consequences: launching the debate on multiculturalism, transculturality and interculturality on the one hand and opening up the horizon of global studies, world philosophies and critical de- & postcolonial approaches on the other.‬‬‬

The Zeitgeist of the 1990s gave the impression that ideologies had been erased from mental maps and that “the end of history” had been reached; the era of liberal or social democracies would be the future of the world and the only remaining problem would be the compatibility of cultures, values and lifestyles. But after 30 years, a fundamental question should be asked: why, despite the growing global commitment to cultural openness, is the rise of ideologies such as chauvinistic nationalism, institutional racism and religious fundamentalisms stronger than before? Or to put the question more clearly: why does the age of multiculturalism go hand in hand with the revival of hard ideologies and the return of archaic forms of hatred, exclusion and rage? 

Ideologies arise when cultural canons are obsolete, when world-visions become broken mirrors and the res religiosa finds no equivalent. The consequence is the essential paradox of ideology: it is the subjectivation of the totality insofar as it excludes the permanent search for intersubjective truth (and this makes it different from culture, which envelops the subject in the totality of a relation to the world as a whole). But the same process leads to the de-totalizing vision of truth, which manifests itself in the egocentric consciousness cut off from reality. The ideologized mind, dispossessed of its symbols, seeks to reinvest itself in secularized ideas.

Professor Han-luen Kantzer Komline (Protestant Theology)
Title: The Idea of the New in Early Christian Thought

Abstract:
For many contemporary people, new is better than old as surely as fresh is better than stale.  In ancient times, however, these values were not assumed in the same way.  Rather, the tendency was just the opposite.  “Older is better,” a popular saying went.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the popular imagination suggests a vision of the early Christians—the “fathers of the church,” as they are sometimes called—as stodgy traditionalists who nervously fanned away any fresh winds of change that happened to blow in their direction.
Yet a closer look begins to erode these caricatures.  Just as contemporary societies and social groups can exhibit a powerful sense of nostalgia, ancient societies and groups were much more complex, multifaceted, and ambivalent in their assessments of novelty than we might at first tend to assume.  This lecture will present some of this complexity as displayed among early Christians as they sought to articulate and defend the innovative character of their faith.

Bio:
Han-luen Kantzer Komline is Associate Professor of Church History and Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, USA and the author of Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account (Oxford University Press, 2020).  Her research focuses on early Christian theology, with many of her publications focusing on Augustine or his relationship to other thinkers, ranging from Ambrose and Cyprian to Karl Barth and Marilynne Robinson. Professor Volker Drecoll is her host as she pursues her research here in Tübingen.


Dr. Diana Liao (Biology)
Title: Vocal Flexibility in Crows

Abstract:
Understanding how human speech evolved is an enormously difficult problem. One approach to doing so is via the comparative method - investigating the vocal behaviors and associated mechanisms of extant animals. In addition to studying closely related species as a means to reconstruct our own evolutionary history, we can also examine the capabilities of much more distant relatives. Currently, I study crows - corvid songbirds - who have departed from the human lineage over 300 million years ago but still demonstrate striking abilities to flexibly learn and produce complex vocalizations. Songbirds possess a highly-specialized set of brain nuclei - collectively known as the song system - that is integral to how juveniles learn to sing from a tutor. In addition to song, I am interested in other cognitive aspects of flexible vocal behaviors and will present results on two projects - one demonstrating the crow's vocal control over the number of calls they make and the other on their capabilities to grasp recursive sequences.

Bio:
Dr Diana Liao is interested in the evolution of complex cognitive and social behaviors using the comparative approach. She first got interested in cognitive neuroscience during her bachelor studies at Johns Hopkins University. She then did a doctorate at Princeton University studying vocal interactions and development in marmoset monkeys. For her postdoc, she switched animal species and traveled to Germany on a Humboldt fellowship to study the complex vocal capabilities of crows at the University of Tübingen.

Dr. Abbed Kanoor (Global Encounters Fellow):
"Return of Ideologies - A Critical Analysis in the Light of Intercultural Phenomenology"
 

Abstract:
The cultural turn is, at the philosophical level, correlated with the fragmentation of all ontologies that we have been witnessing for the last two centuries and which leads to the rejection of monolithic blocks of beliefs. However, we are not entirely free from the resonant power of cultural ontologies. Cultures are visible features of an invisible process of sense-constitution, often overlooked in representational approaches. Cultures claim a total understanding of the world, but when their claims are deprived of recognition, they can be vulnerable to alternative forms of totality, i.e. ideologies. This may explain why, despite the growing global commitment to cultural openness, we are facing a new rise of ideologies such as chauvinistic nationalism and religious fundamentalisms. Intercultural phenomenology is a possible approach to better understand the meaning and consequences of the fragmentation of all ontologies with the aim of searching a third possibility beyond culturalism and traditionalism.

Prof. Mohammed Ech-Cheikh (University Hassan II, Marokko):
"Would we need to re-read classical Arab philosophers?"

Abstract:
The time when philosophical thought was approached from a single point of view is over. With the increasing interactions of the contemporary world and the emerging movement of transcultural philosophy, the time has come for a multi-perspective reading of philosophical thought. Both Western philosophical traditions (continental and Anglo-Saxon) and non-Western ones are beginning to learn from each other and to interchange. Arab philosophical traditions are no exception. Should we re-read these Arab philosophical traditions? If yes, then Why? What can be interesting and inspiring in these traditions? Can they bring us some lessons of wisdom, humility and serenity at a time when postmodern man is beginning to worry about his future?

Dr. Francesco Padovani (Classical Philology):
"Rethinking the Platonic Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age: The Case of Plutarch"

Abstract:
Plutarch was the most eminent writer of Platonic dialogues of his time; nonetheless, only scarce critical attention has been devoted to his relationship with the Platonic model. In the Early Imperial Age, Plato represents a dynamic model for the development of further formal, stylistic and philosophical innovations, which are enhanced by the hybridity of the Platonic dialogue as a literary genre. Plutarch’s renewal of the Platonic model concerns crucial aspects of the dialogue, i.e. the role of the author, the characterization of the main figures, the settings, the hybridization with other literary genres. The literary aspect, as well as the relationship with the Second Sophistic and the Middle-Platonism represent the core of the research. A more general question concerning the adaptation of the Socratic ‘democratic’ model to the elitist Greco-Roman society of Plutarch’s time belongs nonetheless to the context of this project and has to be taken into consideration.

Bio:
Francesco Padovani (Verona, 1989) has obtained his PhD in Ancient Greek Literature and Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in Italy, with a dissertation about the etymologies of the divine names in Plutarch’s works. His research interests cross the boundaries between literature, philosophy and ancient religious studies, focusing mainly on Plutarch of Chaeronaea, Plato and the history of Platonism. In the last few years, he has also intensively explored the fields of classical reception studies and literary theory.

Prof. Dalia Nassar (Philosophy):
"From Romantic Empiricism to the Embodied History of Trees"

Abstract:
The aim of this talk is to develop a picture of trees and of the ways in which they challenge some of our most basic biological and ethical concepts. Beginning with an account of my recent book, "Romantic Empiricism," I explicate how this research led me to the study of plants, and trees in particular, and go on to articulate the character of trees, homing in on the ways in which trees "embody" their history and environment, and how environments are themselves expressions of their trees. I conclude by considering the implications of these insights for our understanding of life, the environment, and ethics.

Bio:
Dalia Nassar is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Her research sits at the intersection of environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of German philosophy. She is the author of two books including, most recently, Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to Humboldt (Oxford, 2022), and editor of several books, including an anthology of works by women philosophers in the long nineteenth century.

Professor Sabine Wilke (German Studies):
"Human-Nonhuman Interactions in Recent German Performances"

Abstract:
Every late spring since 1951, the Vienna Theater Festival brings performers from around the world to Vienna for an opportunity to share recent developments in performance styles. Equally amazing and transformative, on June 1, 2017, a scholarly symposium on animal music took place at the university in Linz. Both of these cross-species performances probe the limits of our common understanding of how performance space works, who is supposed to inhabit it, what the interaction is like between performers and audience members, and what it means to perform in the first place. They blur the boundaries between the realms of humans, animals, and machines by focusing on the radical idea of how these realms could work together.

Bio:
Sabine Wilke is the Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor in Western Civilization and Professor of German at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, cultural and visual studies, and the environmental humanities. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, German colonialism, and the German environmental imagination.


Dr Qi Li (Plant Genetics)
Title: Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Lateral Shoot Formation during Maize Embryogenesis

Abstract:
Cereal grains provide ~50% of calories consumed by humans and livestock. With the population growing, there are urgent demands for increasing yield and improving nutrient quality of cereal grains. The oil-stored embryo has become an attractive target for crop improvement. Comprising a shoot/root meristematic axis that develops into all organs in the plant, the embryo also received considerable attention of geneticists. Studies in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana have dissected mechanisms underlying development of the dicot embryo coupling with a transiently filled endosperm. This knowledge is, however, not directly transferable to embryogenesis in the monocot grasses. Not only are the two classes of embryos morphologically diverse, the developmental processes establishing the embryonic axis are distinct. Aiming to coordinate a heavy load of nutrient transfer from endosperm to embryo in cereal grains, the monocotyledon (aka scutellum) needs to be developed nearby the endosperm, which separates endosperm and the embryonic shoot-root axis initiated at the opposite face. In this talk, I will introduce our present investigations into regulatory mechanisms underlying formation of this adaxial-abaxial polarity characteristic for the monocot embryo. Insights gained allow a comparative understanding of embryogenesis and can facilitate improvement of key agricultural traits.

Bio:
I’m a geneticist solely using maize/corn as the study organism. Before wandering in the corn field of Tübingen as a Humboldt research fellow, I got my bachelor degree in China Agricultural University, Beijing and my PhD in CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Shanghai. Now I’m obsessed with exploring molecular mechanisms of essential developmental processes in cereals.

Dr. Florian Wimmers:
"Hey Google, directions to immune protection. Combining lab- and AI-based methods to map out the immune system"

Abstract:
The emergence of Omics technologies enables scientists to construct highly precise maps of the biological processes inside our bodies. Like Google Maps, these maps can be layered to offer insights at multiple regulatory levels allowing researchers to gain comprehensive system-wide insights on diseases. This talk will look at examples of how these multi-omics maps are used to study infectious diseases and vaccines. 

Mehr Informationen über Florian Wimmers und zu seinem Projekt hier. 

Workshop: "Interkulturelle Philosophie und dekoloniales Denken"

Der Workshop beleuchtete die Beziehung zwischen Interkultureller Philosophie und dekolonialem Denken und trug dazu bei, den Austausch zwischen diesen beiden Forschungsrichtungen zu fördern. 

Kontakt: abbed.kanoor@cof.uni-tuebingen.de

Flyer mit Programm und weitere Informationen hier.  
Der Workshop war Teil des Deutsch-französischen Doktorandenkollegs.

Lunch Talk mit Associate Professor Martin Porr (University of Western Australia, Archaeology/Centre for Rock Art Research + Management):
“The German Ethnographic Expeditions to the Kimberley, Northwest Australia. A Collaborative Assessment of Research History, the Interpretation of Australian Aboriginal Heritage, and Digital Repatriation”

Abstract:
Historical ethnographic collections continue to be increasingly important for Indigenous communities today. However, the processes of repatriation and efforts to make materials in overseas institutions accessible to Traditional Owners can be a long and challenging process. These aspects are the focus of a current project that is jointly coordinated by researchers from the University of Western Australia and the Frobenius Institute (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) in collaboration with three Aboriginal Corporations.
This presentation will provide a brief overview of some preliminary results from the initial collaborative assessment of the ethnographic materials from the German expeditions to the Northwest Kimberley (Western Australia) in 1938 and 1955. These expeditions were conducted by the Institut für Kulturmorphologie (now Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Main) and the then Museum für Völkerkunde (Munich). The project draws on unpublished archival materials in Germany (photos, drawings, sketches, reproductions of rock art images, personal notebooks), published books and papers and the direct input from members of the relevant Australian Indigenous communities. As such, the project is a case study of critical research history and anthropo¬logical knowledge production with similarly great significance to the participating Aboriginal partners and the archival institutions in Germany.

Martin Porr war unser Fellow in Focus im Oktober 2022. Mehr Infos über ihn finden Sie hier. 

Bei den Postdoc Days 2022 war das College of Fellows mit einem Infostand beteiligt und hat die Teilnehmenden über die Arbeit und Rolle des College of Fellows als universitätsbasiertes Institute for Advanced Studies informiert.

Die Graduiertenakademie und die Forschungsförderung haben in Kooperation mit den Fakultäten und zentralen Beratungsstellen ein vielfältiges Programm mit Angeboten in Präsenz und online zusammengestellt. Das CoF ist bei dem "Get together" in der Alten Aula am 28. September mit einem Informationsstand dabei. Wir freuen uns auf Sie!

"Language and Foreignness: An Intercultural Perspective"

Organisation: Madalina Guzun

How can we define a foreign language? And how does learning a foreign language change the way in which we experience what we call our “own”? Language as the mother tongue is the place of familiarity, it is a place of belonging. What changes, then, when we make a step out of this familiarity? From a philosophical point of view, and enabling intercultural dialogue, this international workshop discusses what kind of displacement a foreign language may imply. 

Full workshop abstract

Workshop programme

"Indigenous Forms of Ownership in the Context of Extractivism and the Anthropocene: Ethnologic Comparisons from South America"

Organisation: Juan Rivera

Bericht des Workshops
From September 1 – 3, 2022, a group of 12 Americanists from different parts of the world (Europe, North America and South America) gathered in Tübingen to discuss the theme "Indigenous Forms of Ownership in the Context of Extractivism and the Anthropocene: Ethnologic Comparisons from South America". The presented papers were mutually enlightening, as participants approached the theme from different perspectives; historical, linguistic, ethnologic and (in most cases) ethnographic ones. The central question was: what does it mean to own something among South American indigenous communities? Converging on the ethnography of indigenous life-projects, the workshop explored Amerindian “relational ontologies” contrasting them to those worlds where humans own objects as property. In order to analyse possible Amerindian alternatives to the extractivist ruination of the Anthropocene and produce reciprocally illuminating studies of how South American indigenous peoples’ relationships with things could be conceptualised (or not) as “ownership”, the participants explored the following issues:

- The principles around which human/non-human interactions and ownership forms play out in the Andean and Amazonian regions.
- The apparent inseparability between Andean and Amazonian ownership forms and their practices and idioms of “care”, “nurture”, "mastery" and "familiarizing predation".
- The ways in which Andean and Amazonian life-projects sustained by particular ownership forms could illuminate so far ignored indigenous worldings.
- The entanglements of indigenous worldings with the asymmetrical national politics and ideologies predominant in South American countries saturated by the life ruination of neoliberal extractivism and developmentalism such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Venezuela.
- The distinct ways in which ownership forms contest previous conceptualisations of “relational ontologies” usually labelled as a search for a “good life” based on “offerings” to and “respect” toward “sacred” earth beings.

The fruitful and informative proceedings will be the base of a collection of chapters to be published either in a collective volume or in a peer-review journal´s special issue.

Link zum Programm

 Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer 
“The Transformative Potential of Rights of Nature: Struggling for Alternatives to Destructive Anthropocentric Development.“

Abstract:
Rights of Nature (RoN) denotes nature’s inherent right to exist and flourish. Inspired by indigenous ontologies, RoN have seen the recognition of rivers, mountains and forests as living beings in Latin America, former British colonies and inspired a fast-growing political movement worldwide. RoN’s transformative promise is a new mind set respecting human as well as non-human living beings as agents and to tackle one of the most pressing issues we are facing today: the emancipatory transformation of destructive and deeply unjust anthropocentric development models. This talk gives an innovative perspective on socio-environmental conflicts by (re)conceptualising them within the framework of ‘ontological politics’. Scaling-up insights on indigenous peoples’ understandings of nature and how these are mobilised in resistance to projects of resource extraction, development or conservation imposed on their territories, the lecture concludes with a research agenda that explores the potential of RoN in the Global South as well as in global climate activism to yield legal and institutional models for more sustainable and just human–nature relations.

Lunch Talk mit Sarah Lohmann:
“Utopian Chronotopes and the Feminist Utopia as Critical Thought Experiment”

Abstract:
Literary utopias tend to occupy an uneasy space between fiction and abstract social planning, and have historically been criticised on both counts. In my paper, I will be employing a third path of analysis, that of treating utopian novels as literary-philosophical thought experiments within the genre of science fiction, in order to make a case for an analysis of their success in terms their basic structural configuration around Bakhtinian chronotopes. In particular, I will juxtapose what I term the ‘homeostatic chronotope’ of the traditional utopia with the ‘complexity chronotope’ of the critical feminist utopia of the 1970s. Having presented my terms, I will briefly analyse Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed as examples of thought experiments that fundamentally function as self-organising and self-optimising complex adaptive systems on both the societal and the narrative level as chronotopes. Finally, I will explore some of the implications of complexity theory as providing frameworks for sustainable utopian systems in non-literary contexts, and how it might provide some inspiration in our current period of global crisis and reconfiguration.

Die Videoaufzeichnung des Vortrags finden Sie hier.

Abstract
What does it mean to be in public, to appear and to act? The existential significance of public spaces and encounters has become clear to us in the last two years of the pandemic, especially through withdrawal experiences. But even in the years before, classical concepts of the public sphere and privacy had been put to the test theoretically and practically, insofar as they rearrange and hybridize themselves through advancing technologization and economization. All these are contemporary experiences and moments of crisis of the public sphere – a crisis that requires a phenomenological reflection in the Husserl sense, on primordial foundation, processes of meaning and types of experience of the public.

In the Husserl Lecture, basic lines of a "phenomenology of the public" were developed in recourse to the rich phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition. It is conceived as a methodically reflected analysis of structures of experience, existence, and appearance, as well as the constitution of reality. In addition to the essential characteristics of the commonality and visibility of what appears in public space, anonymity and exposure, accessibility and exclusion, participation and distance, as well as modes of dispute and judgment as experiential and social types of the public are in question. In this way, beyond mere psychological state shots, it is possible to open up how worlds, public, private and above all hybrid worlds constitute, er- and are lived, how ambivalences with regard to the appearance of the world, self and others emerge and how successful and failing experiences of the public can come about as a result.

Abstract:
What is land? what is a river? What is the nature of earth, water, and how could they be inextricably related to both danger and pleasure? How do they become indispensable for diverse compositions of the worlds?

This convivial talk tried to describe how people from other latitudes and environments conceive non-human entities that surround them. Current issues of the Anthropocene, a Latin American writer and Amerindian mythology and ritual music came together to offer a possible storytelling for evaluating how to survive in a damaged planet otherwise.

Venue: College of Fellows, University of Tübingen, Germany

Organization: Niels Weidtmann, University of Tübingen, Germany

Topic

“The comparative anthropology of worlding”

Anthropologist Philippe Descola says of himself that he was ill-prepared for the field work for which he lived with the Achuar in Ecuador in the 1980s. Poorly prepared, however, not because of his own failings, but because of the self-evident way in which he took for granted the distinction between nature and culture at that time – a distinction which anthropology has always worked with and which had hardly ever been seriously questioned until then. The matter-of-course nature of this distinction, however, not only prevented (and still prevents) a genuine understanding of societies such as that of the Achuar, but also suggests a fatal misunderstanding of these societies. Since nature and culture cannot be easily separated in their case, they are called “primitive peoples”, who still remain in the prehistoric and pre-cultural stage of human development. Descola points out that such a description is completely mistaken. Instead of being trapped in their immediate natural environment, the Achuar recognise in most animals and plants their own personalities with whom they can communicate at least rudimentarily and whose interests they must respect. The nature-culture-border does not carry here.

Committed to the descriptive method of anthropology, Descola pleads to discard any form of ontological preconception when visiting foreign societies. The different life-worlds are not adequately understood if they are merely classified as different cultural interpretations of “the” one nature. Instead, the life-worlds, for their part, first establish the ontology and thus also the understanding of man and the world that corresponds to them. Descola summarizes this with the term “worlding”. He names four different forms of such worlding: naturalism, animism, totemism, and analogism. The ontology of naturalism, which is generally assumed by modern sciences, is on an equal footing with the other forms. Which ontology is valid is determined by the life-world, but not does a presupposed ontology give the correct understanding of the life-world.

In political terms, Descola opens up new possibilities for linking the rights of nature not only to the resource requirements of man. But how is it possible to give non-humans access to the political sphere? What does that mean with respect to current debates on climate change and conservation? A philosophical difficulty that arises from Descola's work can be summarized in the question of the possibility of plural ontologies. How do we escape the arbitrariness of relativism without simply assuming a universalism again? Furthermore, are there other forms of worlding besides those pointed out by Descola? Shall we conceive them as four completely separate categories to describe the continuities and discontinuities between humans and non-humans? Or are they rather something like Weberian ideal types – useful for thinking, but hard to turn into iron boxes?

These and other questions have been explored in the Workshop.

Organisation

This workshop enabled discussions with Philippe Descola about his ideas and contributions across several themes. It has been of interest to participants from a wide range of disciplines. There was an opening session on day one. Day two to four consisted of an initial overview paper by Professor Descola, which was followed by participant contributions and discussions. The school ended with a closing session and a wrap-up of topics on day five. Participants werde also invited to attend a public lecture by Philippe Descola during the week.

Participants had to present a 15-minute paper that critically discussed one of the themes and/or questions of the workshop. Engagement with current research questions and issues was particularly welcome as well as connections with current PhD projects.

This workshop was open to doctoral students from all disciplines (applications of master students will be considered in exceptional cases).

Applicants had to supply the following documents:

• Application form
• CV (2 pages max)
• 300-word expression of interest
• Paper title and 300-word abstract

In his lecture, Descola focused on the "multiple births” of naturalism, pointing towards aspects of naturalistic thinking inherent already in ancient thought. At the same time, he sketched the unique historical emergence of naturalism in modern (natural) science as a way of tackling the rich yet ‘chaotic’ relations of analogism. While outlining differences between the ontologies, Descola also touched upon common features. In particular, he highlighted transitions between analogist and naturalist knowledge, which both share the notion that singularities can be linked in networks of multiple relationships, as mixed entities with intrinsic differences. He thus provided a framework both for understanding the emergence of scientific thought in Europe as one decisive form of worlding, as well as for an understanding of naturalism’s formative influences on the world in which we live today. Even if Descola rejects an all too simple alternative, as to think of a way out of the naturalist mode of worlding, his comparative insights call for a rethinking of strict dichotomies within the ontology of naturalism, especially those of nature and culture, and of humans and non-humans.

Descola’s well-attended Summer Lecture was the first large event organised by the College of Fellows, officially inaugurated in April 2022 as a platform for interdisciplinary research and networking among international research fellows at the University of Tübingen. The lecture was accompanied by a five-day workshop (30 May – 3 June) for international PhD students, who discussed Descola’s work with him, and explored its theoretical applications and stimulating potentials in their own contributions across several desciplines. Both events have been part of the activities of the Focus Group “Interdisciplinary Anthropology” at the College of Fellows.

You can find more information here.

Traditionell sind die Philosophen die Subjekte der Philosophie. Sie sind diejenigen, die philosophische Theorien formulieren. Es hat jedoch viele Versuche gegeben, mit dieser Idee zu brechen und andere mögliche Subjekte der Philosophie in Betracht zu ziehen. Können „normale Menschen“ Philosophie betreiben? Oder können „normale Menschen“ Wissen produzieren? Gibt es eine Philosophie der Massen? Wenn ja, wie wird sie ausgedrückt? Wie nutzt sie Technik und Medien?

Ziel dieses Workshops ist es gewesen, die Begriffe „Gemeinsinn“, „Alltäglichkeit“ und „Medien“ (bzw. Mittel) interkulturell zu hinterfragen. Zu diesem Zweck wurden die Texte von Miki Kiyoshi, Tosaka Jun, Nakai Masakazu und Nakamura Yūjirō verwendet. Diese Autoren haben nicht versucht, den gesunden Menschenverstand des Status quo zu rehabilitieren, sondern im Gegenteil, den Gemeinsinn der Massen zu denken. Zu diesem Zweck konzentrierten sie sich auf die Massenmedien: die Zeitung und den Film. Diese in Japan entstandene Medienphilosophie kann nützlich sein, um eine Reihe von Fragen von aktueller Relevanz zu beantworten: Wie ist es möglich, eine interkulturelle Medienphilosophie zu denken? Inwieweit kann das Alltägliche revolutionär sein? Welche Rolle spielen Medien und Maschinen in der aktuellen philosophischen Debatte?

Seit den 1930er-Jahren gab es in Japan einige Autoren, die versuchten, die philosophische Kraft des Gemeinsinnes zu retten. Wie Gramsci mit seinem buon senso oder Lefevre mit seinem Begriff der quotidiennté versuchten diese japanischen Philosophen, Formen der Erkenntnis der Wirklichkeit „von unten“ zu erforschen. Miki Kiyoshi postulierte eine Grunderfahrung (kisokeiken), nämlich die körperliche Erfahrung des In-der-Welt-Seins. Für Miki war diese Erfahrung historisch und manifestierte sich in der Praxis und in der Erfahrung des Proletariats. Für Tosaka Jun, einen Kollegen von Miki an der Universität Kyoto, war das Prinzip der historischen Zeit weder in der subjektiven Zeit der Phänomenologie noch in der objektiven, rationalisierten Zeit der Wissenschaft zu suchen. Das Prinzip der historischen Zeit sei vielmehr in dem zu finden, was er „Alltäglichkeit“ (nichijōsei) nannte. Diese Alltäglichkeit war die situierte Zeitlichkeit des Arbeiters, die sich nach den Bedürfnissen seines Arbeitstages richtete. Miki und Tosaka beschränkten sich jedoch nicht darauf, über diese Begriffe abstrakt nachzudenken. Sie suchten nach anderen Wegen, Philosophie im Einklang mit ihren Theorien zu betreiben. Auf diese Weise haben sie beide Journalismus betrieben. Tosaka wiederum theoretisiert ebenfalls über die Bedeutung des Films.

Ein anderer Autor jener Zeit, Nakai Masakazu, war ebenfalls ein sehr wichtiger Filmtheoretiker. Für ihn bot der Film ein Mittel, durch das die Massen ihre Gefühle ausdrücken konnten. Die Erfahrung der Maschine war für ihn das „Mittel“ (mitteru), das dies ermöglichte, denn während eines Films sind es die Zuschauer, die die aktive Aufgabe haben, die Szenen und Schnitte in ihrem Kopf zu vereinen. Abschließend sei noch der Fall von Nakamura Yūjirō zu erwähnen. Obwohl Nakamura hauptsächlich in der Nachkriegszeit schrieb, wurde er stark von Miki, Tosaka und Nakai beeinflusst. Im Gegensatz zu Miki und Tosaka kehrt Nakamura zum aristotelischen Sinn des gesunden Menschenverstands als koinē aisthēsis zurück. Der gesunde Menschenverstand in seiner idealen Funktion ist für Nakamura das, was das Gesamtbild in den Blick nimmt und spontan auf die sich ständig verändernden Anforderungen der realen Welt und ihrer konkreten Situationen antwortet.

Während des Workshops wurde eine Auswahl von Texten dieser Autoren gemeinsam diskutiert und kommentiert. Die Diskussion begann mit einem Impuls von einem der Teilnehmenden. Am Ende eines jeden Tages gab es außerdem einen speziellen Vortrag. Die Veranstaltung fand auf Deutsch und Englisch statt.

Dieser Online-Workshop wurde organisiert von unserem ehemaligen Fellow Dr. Elise Coquereau-Saouma.

Thema

‘Freedom’ in modern and contemporary Indian philosophy in English can have two different meanings. One is metaphysical and universal. It describes a state of being to be reached, often called ‘(transcendental) liberation’ or ‘mokṣa’. The other is political and inter-personal or social. It implies a freedom of action, an inter-personal process that often requires negotiation within society, or political struggles. During the freedom movement in India, it was discussed as ‘svarāj’ (self-rule, independence), famously known from Mahatma Gandhi. Yet the borders between a metaphysical, or spiritual/religious sense of freedom, and a political or social one, are difficult to trace in contemporary Indian philosophy.

Mahatma Gandhi’s or Aurobindo’s political struggles are at the same time spiritual, with particular reinterpretations of Advaita. In academic philosophy, the ‘svarāj in Ideas’ of Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya, addressed to his students, pled for extending the political struggle to an intellectual one against “cultural subjection”. Independence is correlated to freedom in thinking. In his Studies in Philosophy, ‘freedom’ is described as one Absolute, detailed in a gradual detachment from all objectivities, toward the absolute subjectivity. Even though in the twentieth century freedom is located within the boundary of knowledge, and even though there are not specific ritualistic Hindu references, ‘freedom’ also has a universal, transcendental, spiritual connotation, as the highest state to be reached in an inner realization of the Absolute.

In a way, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya expresses a persisting plurality and subtle intermingling of the quest for ‘freedom’ in contemporary Indian philosophy: Is freedom a political svarāj, in which case it ought to be reached with others in the socio-political realm, or is freedom the way to reach inwardly an absolute state of liberation from the world of alienation that others cause? Even if it is socio-politically, is independence also not a struggle against alienation, namely a quest for independence from Others (colonial rulers), and in which case is this independence also a liberation from a world? Is realizing one’s own inward liberation a way to recognize the unity of all, or an exclusion of all those we leave behind?

In modern and contemporary India, responses vary: they question the socio-political formation of the idea of freedom in relation with colonization, the inclusivity of Brahmanical metaphysics and the secularization of mokṣa, and in relation with existentialism, the relation to alienation and inter-subjectivity, namely the role of Others in the realization of freedom. Highlighting the diversity and continuity of the concepts of freedom in Indian philosophies, and the newness that the political context and the contacts with non-Indian philosophies brought to the concept, this workshop questions the relation between freedom(s) and Others, svarāj and mokṣa, and the intricacies between metaphysics and politics.

Programm

Dieser Online-Workshop wurde organisiert von unserem Fellow Dr. Fernando Wirtz und Dr. Carina Pape

At the first Young Researchers Workshop of the Society for Intercultural Philosophy, young intercultural philosophers will briefly present their individual projects.

Christian Sinn

School teachers are mainly executors who depend on theoretical results. They do not have time nor the will for proper theory production, and their main task is the imposition of knowledge

These are common suppositions about teachers not only by society but also by academics. Opposed to this external attribution, the investigations of the Grupo de la Historia de la Práctica Pedagogica have shown a variety of differing self-attributions. During the 70s’, teachers and educational workers uncovered a different intellectual and political self-attribution, as empowered active constructors of social and political life. By framing this different teacher role as an activist of life (militante de la vida), Contreras & Murcia have analysed the political interpretation of Colombian teachers in the social movement. Colombian teachers fought for political and social recognition of their knowledge and expertise, mainly incarnated in a right to theorise themselves and to co-decide on educational politics. In the workshop I will present two fundamental approaches I have found on Colombian teacher roles in relation to Claudia Brunner’s concept of undoing epistemic violence.
 

Alessio Gerola
Beyond control: philosophical and ethical implications of biomimicry

Biomimicry is a contemporary design approach that takes nature as source of inspiration for technological innovation. Besides biomimicry, other bio-inspired approaches exist, such as biomimetics and bionics. Their interests and scope lean closer to those of engineering than to those of ecology. This situation creates a fundamental ambiguity within bio-inspired approaches. While biomimicry aims at more sustainable and bio-inclusive design, biomimetics and bionics seem to imply a more subtle form of exploitation of nature. In the context of the Anthropocene, such ambiguity raises questions about the possible forms of our planetary futures. If nature is supposed to inspire not only our technologies but also our ecological ethos, what kind of relationship with nature can we imagine in order to shape a more sustainable future? I will briefly explore potential directions in which Japanese philosophers such as Nishida Kitaro can help us addressing this question.
 

Sakine Mohamadi Bozorg
A Historical Investigation into the “Emersion” or “Problematization” of Critical Thinking in Iranian Modernity

The discussion of modernity in Iran and its various dimensions has been a significant issue in recent Iranian academic and intellectual debates. The variety of research questions and approaches stemming from these debates address subject areas such as political modernity, social modernity, modernization, and the discussion of development. They have also produced plentiful attempts to provide different readings of historiography and the definition of modernity. However, most of these studies are based on Occidental modern philosophy, with Iranian scholars attempting to formulate Iranian modernity based on the ideas of Foucault, Habermas, Giddens, and others. My project investigates theoretical dimensions and philosophical concepts in modern Iranian thought. For this purpose, I will question of the concept of critique and the characteristics of critical thinking. I focus on a specific contemporary Persian literary genre, namely Persian travelogues.

Dieser Hybrid-Workshop wurde organisiert von unserem 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.

Belonging is an increasingly questionable concept in the 21st century, in which human society is becoming more and more global. Societies are becoming more diverse, national allegiances are being challenged by modern labor migration as well as by flight and poverty migration, and traditional ties seem to be generally dissolving. At the same time, a new need for belonging is emerging. Do the phenomena of globalization and belonging contradict each other? Or are we challenged today to rethink belonging at all?

The topic of the workshop takes up a number of research questions that are currently being widely discussed in many humanities and social sciences. The question of the lines of belonging along which increasingly globalized societies are structured is a key issue everywhere. The different perspectives and emphases of the individual disciplines not only complement each other, but also productively challenge each other.

"Belonging" is explained in English dictionaries as "to have a proper place". Thus, the term opens up perspectives on space, on "one's own" and on property, which one possesses quite concretely. "Property is an institution that simultaneously constitutes a thing-relationship and a socialrelationship" and also forms a particular form of self-relationship. Owning movable things - in the narrower sense "belongings" - or land does not only mean that one can freely dispose of them, generate income from them, resell them, and exclude others from them. Rather, ownership, selfworth, recognition, and even identity enter into a far-reaching alliance in modern societies: The modern subject is one who owns what he or she uses or needs, or, to put it another way, only those are sovereign subjects who own what they use and need.

Property guarantees power of disposal, right of exclusion, participation and belonging. These rights are protected by modern states and are considered fundamental rights of freedom. The protection of property and the freedom to own are not value-neutral regulations, but are based on normative principles.

This is followed by questions about the justice of distribution or about formats of distribution and belonging. Increasingly discussed today are concepts of distribution and belonging in terms of the - historical and contemporary - "commons": tangible and intangible resources are referred to as commons. These include air and water, of course, but today also access to education, knowledge and information. In principle, they can be used by all members of a community and thus combine a specific type of "belonging" with a particular type of "affiliation."

Belonging and Property

If one follows the suggestion that modern orders can be recognized by the fact that they can no longer hide their contingency, the view becomes free for the reactions that this provokes. Without being backed up by metaphysics any longer, the rational bipeds step onto the stage - and intervene in the course of events. Through the exchange of signs we create orders, give structures to the social world. We establish relationships and draw boundaries; we erect symbolic orders, regulate proximity and distance, and tie belonging to certain conditions. None of this is harmless, no gesture neutral.

And all of this happens without our being able to claim extramundane authority for it. What we call "reality" owes itself to perpetual classifications and categorizations. Orders of belonging must be examined within this horizon - that is, those social practices through which recognition, entitlement and participation, resources and capitals are allocated. In this context, the triad of race, class and gender comes into view. But it does not stop there. Other categories must also be taken into account and examined in their interplay.

These processes of negotiation are rarely conducted cooperatively and consensually; it is less likely that they are conducted violently. Because these struggles do not stop at the borders of the nation state, it is also important to look at the power relations that have developed between the Global North and the Global South.

Belonging to the World and Situatedness

When we think of belonging, we first think of something like a connecting and often correspondingly binding relationship. A person belongs to a group, a thing belongs to someone's property. When we describe belonging in this way, the moment of not-belonging is already included. It is true that what belongs to another is by no means unaffected by this form of relationship, but on the contrary can be decisively determined by it, for better or for worse. And yet, there is no identity; that which belongs exists in its essence independently of the respective form of belonging, and could therefore also not belong (or belong to something else).

Differently with regard to the belonging to the world. One cannot not belong to the world, this is true for persons as well as for things. But what then still means belonging? If there is nothing beyond belonging to the world, then the distance described above is lost in relation to the world, then the belonging person or thing has no being in itself independent of the world. Belonging to the world is therefore constitutive for everything that exists. However, the world itself, to which we all belong, does not exist beyond our belonging to it either. World as such does not exist. The analysis of belonging to the world therefore shows that what belongs and what it belongs to are mutually constitutive of each other and only emerge from the process of belonging itself. This, however, does not describe a special case of belonging, but instead captures a basic feature of every form of belonging.

Reflecting on this basic feature of belonging allows for a critical analysis of numerous entrenched forms of belonging (claims to ownership as well as self-understandings) that are no longer specifically performed and lived. An exciting question arises about the situatedness of belonging. "Belonging" does not exist in general; there are only concrete and temporary processes of belonging. In this we encounter something like the situatedness of world.

The Right of Belonging / Not-Belonging in the Global Encounter

That rights require belonging, i.e. that the validity of rights depends on their scope of application, to which one must belong, has been consensus at least since Hannah Arendt's critique of human rights. In her reading of Arendt, however, Judith Butler sharpens Arendt's critique once again when she rejects Arendt's talk of a pre-legal state of nature or of 'naked life' as a place or state of nonbelonging. For belonging and non-belonging are, according to Butler, equally the result of legal action. The assumption of a pre-legal non-belonging follows the logic of origin or founding narratives, which have a heuristic function and are usually oriented towards the deductive justification of a state, but do not describe historical processes - and cannot capture the complexity of globalization processes, migration and multiple belongings. Accordingly, not only does the question of the conditional relationship between law and belonging arise anew, but also that of the legal production of non-belonging.

The meaning of belonging, however, extends beyond the field of the juridical, since belonging also means a specific participation and being part of a group, which is expressed in social and cultural practices, ideas and narratives, and which is affectively justified and, if necessary, 'naturalized'. Belonging is accordingly more than just membership. It is part of and participates in (collective) processes of subjectivation. In view of the conditional relationship between law and non-belonging, the question arises, especially in the context of globalization, migration and multiple belonging, what role law plays in (collective) processes of subjectivation, how it relies on narratives, ideas and practices of socio-cultural and socio-historical belonging in its production of legal belonging and non-belonging, which it selects and communicates in order to establish belonging/nonbelonging.

Belonging, Emplacement, Home

In this section we want to explore the question of the human being's sense of place. One of the central traits of human belonging is linked to emplacement, in the questions of where we come from, where we live and dwell, where we stay. The question is most likely to arise when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, alienating places, such as when we are forced to stay in a hospital for an extended period of time, or in an alienating part of town where there is a sense that we do not belong. Nevertheless, the question of where one feels one belongs cannot be answered easily. Places of belonging, the positive localization of human beings, turns out to be complex and differentiated. Are places to be understood territorially, geographically? Or can they rather be traced back to the human being's sense of meaning? Should places be thought of at all only starting from the belonging to it, so that localization is to be understood actively - as a finding or creating of places?

It is in human habitation that the need for localization is most pronounced. However, dwelling is often temporary, i.e., temporal. What does it mean to dwell? Does it refer to human establishments or does it existentially define human beings? Is dwelling to be understood starting from habits (habitus)? Does dwelling presuppose familiarity? And what does it mean to feel at home?

The question of home arises especially with reference to the refugee and migration issue. Is home interchangeable? Can a new homeland be found or created? Or is home to be questioned as such at all, overtaken by today's mobility and globality? Beyond the frequent political misuse of the term homeland, especially in the refugee question, does homeland still have carrying power with reference to the belonging of the individual?

Religion and Belonging

Forms of religious belonging vary widely across the globe, depending on tradition and religious community. Of particular interest in the context of the conference is the change in the understanding of belonging and of attribution processes that can be observed in various social contexts in recent decades, not least as a result of the increasing religious pluralization of many societies. The congruence between official and self-identified affiliation, religious practice and religious conviction is by no means (any longer) given; nor does official nonaffiliation imply a lack of practice and conviction. Rather, even in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian societies, there are increasingly multiple affiliations, practices, and convictions that are more situationally oriented than defined exclusively by a particular religious community. The academic debates here discuss concepts of "believing without belonging" (Grace Davie) as well as "believing in belonging" (Abby Day) for Europe and North America. Thereby, "believing" is increasingly interpreted in the sense of a performative self-identification with regard to social relations. The link between religious and social belonging is particularly relevant in migration contexts, in which, for example, religious practice as confirmation of an ethnic identity can, on the one hand, become more significant for the individual than in the home country, and on the other hand, can hinder integration.

Little consideration has been given to non-Christian societies, such as those in East Asia, where intentional religious affiliation is largely irrelevant, but Buddhist or Shinto practice (in the case of Japan) is integrated as a matter of course into individual life courses and into the consciousness of national belonging. Given the diversity of conceptions of religious belonging, the question arises of how the relevance and forms of religious belonging change in religiously and ethnically plural societies.