LFU:online

Thorough knowledge of selected debates in contemporary philosophy, in particular from its theoretical areas, and relevant methodological considerations.

For a long time, interpretation was an unquestioned core element of humanities methodology, but in the second half of the 20th century it was problematized from various sides. Susan Sontag, for example, spoke out against interpretation in the reception of art and Friedrich Kittler, following on from Marshall McLuhan, rejected hermeneutics as the residue of a culture of meaning shaped by alphabetic writing and book printing, which had become obsolete in the face of new media. Since the turn of the millennium, the voltes against hermeneutically oriented humanities and cultural studies have multiplied, to the extent that new theories of affect, materialism and realism have turned away from the mediation of the symbolic as a key research interest. At the same time, a desire for immediacy can be observed in the field of media culture itself, which manifests itself not only in the dwindling relevance of written language in favor of presence, immersion and affect, but also in the claim to replace interpretation with data analysis. In the seminar, we will attempt to trace some of the basic lines of these diverse currents of anti-hermeneutics.