LFU:online

The seminar will explore the impact and repercussions of the colonial era on European worlds of conception and mentality as reflected in select examples from popular literature, film and the media. Expressed in them is the interaction between colonial, scientific and cultural discourses. Connections will be made to selected culture-critical and science-critical approaches in post- and anti-colonial literatures that focus on questions of intellectual independence/freedom. This will open up a reflective look at processes and discourses of transcultural globalization.

Exoticism and colonial romanticism in literature and art, in popular literature, the expanding media and the film industry experienced a veritable boom around 1900. The consumption of cultural “exotica” and its scientific appropriation became a key element in mundane stylish life styles in the metropolitan centers of the industrial age. But the Tropics, the South Sea and Orient also provided a multifaceted projection screen around 1900 for reform movements critical of modernization.

Numerous authors, poets and thinkers in the Global South viewed things practically from the other side – a re-reading grounded in the criticism of culture and science from the perspective of other worlds of experience. Through various examples drawn from literature, the cinema and media, we will focus attention on linkages, interrelationships and contradictions as well as transcultural positions.

Block seminar: the first two units provide an introduction by the lecturer to cultural-historical and theoretical positions, as well as a basis for selection and preliminary discussion of topics for seminar paper presentation (depending on the number of participants, in small working groups). In two further units, analysis will be deepened through student presentations and group discussions, and applied to case examples drawn from literature and the media. In choosing topics, previous knowledge (also informal) and interests of the participants will be taken into account.

Regular attendance at seminar meetings, paper/presentation (where appropriate in groups). Active participation in class discussion will also be included in determining a final seminar grade.

1. Achebe, Chinua: The Education of a British-Protected Child, Essays. New York 2009 (Auszug)
2. Achebe, Chinua: Home and Exile. Edinburgh 2007 (Auszug)
3. Hall, Stuart: Der Westen und der Rest. Diskurs und Macht, in: Rassismus und kulturelle Identität. Ausgewählte Schriften 2. Hamburg: Argumente 1994, S. 137-179
4. Honold, Alexander/Simons, Oliver: Kolonialismus als Kultur. Literatur, Medien, Wissenschaft in der deutschen Gründerzeit des Fremden. Tübingen 2002 (Auszug)
5. Lal, Vinay: Empire of Knowledge. Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy. New Delhi 2005 (Auszug)
6. Ngugi wa Thiong‘o „Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Globalectics. Theory and the Politics of Knowing. NY 2012. (Auszug)
7. Said, Edward: Kultur und Imperialismus. Einbildungskraft und Politik im Zeitalter der Macht. Frankfurt 1994. (Auszug)
8. Struck, Wolfgang: Die Eroberung der Phantasie. Kolonialismus, Literatur und Film zwischen deutschem Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik, Göttingen 2010 (Auszug)

(commented further literature, handout and selected texts will be provided online)