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Transcultural processes grow more complex the longer they last. Misconceptions and acquisition of knowledge rarely exclude one another.  Here shall be demonstrated first the centrality of “China” within such processes taking place for three centuries in the European “Occident”, or “Abendland” (since the second half of the past century rather the “West”).  For China, the “West” has a similar function for about one and a half century.  Skills to perceive the different dynamics of these processes will be honed. At the same time, particular contexts of perception (philosophical concepts, esthetic worlds, social and political systems) will be checked  for the epistemic value of misconceptions  produced by the process of cultural translation.

Having one’s mind on China, looking out for or shying away from China in comparison, capturing, living through and letting alone China as dream, as real or intellectual experience – these are general, gradually sequenced aspects of a motif pervading the cultural history of modernity.

In occidental literature – this means Europe until about the 1920s – this is represented by great names such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (), Voltaire (), Johann Wolfgang Goethe (), later Ezra Pound, Bertolt Brecht () and others. To this adds a wave of concepts and methods of production in material culture: beginning with diverse commodities of chinoiserie and the art of landscape gardening during the 18^th and 19^th centuries to dietetic and therapeutic methods of physical-mental self-cultivation that, during the 20^th century scored a comparably broad impact. But China too, on its way to modernity and beyond, again and again has “translated” herself: as nation state and “Middle Kingdom”, as socialist and modern society “with Chinese characteristics”, as origin of  a civilization with “East-Asian, Confucian cultural imprint”. During the course of this Vorlesung/Übung? we will venture to explore this specter of diverse China perceptions as far as to compare and evaluate transcultural processes focusing on particular phenomena.

Misconceptions are parts of any process of translation (from linguistic-literary translation to cultural translation). Therefore, it is important to first identify a misconception without evaluating it in order to, in a second step, apprehend its function in cultural, artistic and intellectual developments.

At the start, five topical blocks will be presented. Each of them is assembled around a development in intellectual or cultural history or in social and medial contexts that extends into the present. The participants, then, will be left two weeks and the included introducing lectures to choose topics. In the following, these topics shall be worked on, individually or in small groups and in arrangement with the lecturer, to prepare a paper and resulting discussion.

To complete the course the students have to take part in learning groups and prepare several keynote speeches during the semester. At the end of the semester a short paper (circumference about 4.5 pages) has to be written. In addition, the active participation in the discussions will be part of the rating.

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2. Hinton, David (2017): The Wilds of Poetry. Adventures in Mind and Landscape. Shambhala
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