IntranetRebekka Ladewig trägt zum Thema “‘Orientierungsgefühl’ und ‘Vernunftglaube’: Kants Koordinaten im Denken des Übersinnlichen” vor. Anschließend diskutieren wir gemeinsam den Aufsatz “Knowing and Being” von Michael Polanyi.
Central to the workshop is a systematic and historical analysis of marginal figures, things, cultures and fields of knowledge, as well as religious, political, cultural or economical groups, which are considered marginal in relation to the prevailing society.
We will deal with (I.) the crises, processes, events, rites and techniques that are instrumental in producing the marginality of specific persons, things, cultures and fields of knowledge in the first place. (II.) This requires a critical revision of the analysis of space – the relation of centre and periphery, the undecided states of liminality, transition and intermediacy, processes of inclusion and exclusion, of eviction and migration, the spatial configurations of the social, the relation of ergon and parergon. (III.) It is of high interest to analyse the constitutive role and the multiple functions of social, political, technical, discursive, economic and cultural marginality with regard to the dominant culture, economy, language, society, way of life, and to the canonical and prevalent forms of knowledge. (IV.) There is finally the marginal perspective itself – being lost, insignificant, invisible, abandoned, decoupled – that should be examined. This includes the manifold possibilities generated by the marginal perspective as for example in counter-cultures, artful reallocations, cunning aesthetics, sly uses of commodities, subversive practices, irritations, disturbances and disruptions of order and revolutionary movements.
The workshop focuses on forms of implicit or tacit knowledge – i.e. embodied, habitual, intuitive, virtuous, or subconscious practices, actions, and performances – that constitute and alter the perception, production, and representation of space. It is aimed at clarifying and specifying the concept of tacit knowledge.
The notion of »implicit« or »tacit« knowledge was first coined by the Hungarian chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi in the early 1950ies. According to Polanyi, tacit knowledge – as opposed to explicit knowledge – first and foremost describes forms of practical knowing – a kind of knowing-in-action, i.e. embodied, skilled, virtuous and experienced knowledge components of individual actors. However, Polanyi’s notion of the implicit is not limited to bodily performances but also includes the sphere of theoretical knowledge. „We can know more than we can tell“ is one of the core conclusions by Polanyi who conceived of knowledge as either implicit or rooted in implicit knowledge. How to think of such a broad concept of implicit knowledge? How exactly does it differ from and what similarities does it share with other theoretical approaches to practical knowledge, such as Marcel Mauss’s »Techniques of the Body«, Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the »habitus«, or Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between »knowing how« and »knowing that«? How can we define tacit knowing with regard to concepts of the intuitive as described for instance by Henri Bergson? What affinities does it hold with regard to concepts of virtuosity, or the notion of »experiencedness« (Ludwik Fleck) that have come to be reconsidered in the last years especially in the field of the history of science?
Please register with the following email address until March 12, 2011: rladewig@culture.hu-berlin.de
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In den postindustriellen Nationen geht das Gespenst des Dieners um. Der Dienstleistungssektor gilt immer noch als die entscheidende Wachstums- und Beschäftigungsbranche, die jeweils die ganze Gesellschaft erfassen und ausrichten soll. Auch wenn man heute versucht ist, das Projekt der modernen Dienstleistungsgesellschaft mit ihren ins Nirwana führenden Service-Hotlines und Offshore-Call-Centers für gescheitert zu erklären, so wirft es doch oder eben deshalb die Frage nach der Genealogie und kulturhistorischen Umwertung der Werte von Dienen und Herrschen auf: Bei Platon und Aristoteles ist der Dienst des Sklaven eine verfemte, aber legitime und natürliche Tätigkeit, die der Kontemplation des Philosophen, aber auch der (politischen) Praxis und (ästhetisch-technischen) Poiesis entgegengestellt wird. Die Verachtung des sklavischen Dienstes gilt nicht nur allen körperlichen Arbeiten, sondern auch dem Akt des Vorlesens, ja er schließt selbst die linke Hand mit ein, die als Symbol und Organon des Sklaven einer kulturell überdeterminierten Asymmetrie des Körpers Vorschub leistet. Wie aber kommt es zur Nobilitierung des Dienens zum einen in Gestalt des Gottesdienstes (und bei Paulus als Sklave des Messias), zum anderen im Modus des Liebes- und Minnedienstes, und nicht zu vergessen: des Staatsdienstes und Dienstes am Kunden? Die soziale und politisch marginale Position des Sklaven bzw. Dieners im anthropologischen Spannungsfeld zwischen Mensch und Automat fällt mit der Unsichtbarkeit und Lautlosigkeit zusammen, mit der er seine Aufgaben und Dienste zu erfüllen hat. Welches sind die räumlich-proxemischen Praktiken, Interaktionsrituale und Techniken seiner Marginalisierung (Vorzimmer, Geheimkabinette, Blick-, Gebärden- und Sprechregime) und in welcher Weise findet die Anforderung des unauffälligen und störungsfreien Dienstes seit dem 19. Jahrhundert Eingang in die zahllosen technischen, apparativen, medialen und organisationalen Supplemente des Dieners?
Es geht um eine genealogische Suche nach kulturhistorisch entscheidenden Weichenstellen, die für die kulturelle Ausbildung eines spezifischen Ethos und für die Aufwertung der Berufung/des Berufs/der professionellen Tätigkeit des Dienens eine entscheidende Rolle spielen konnten. Für die räumliche Konfigurationsanalyse des Sozialen stehen methodisch die einschlägigen Arbeiten von Norbert Elias und Edward T. Hall Pate. Die Oikos- und Oikonomialiteratur sind für die erste Phase der Untersuchung ebenso entscheidend wie die politische Philosophie, die Architekturtheorie, Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie seit der Antike und das Neue Testament.
Since November 2011 Iris Därmann is Professor for Kulturwissenschaftliche Ästhetik at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory and within the Excellence Cluster Topoi since 2009.
She studied Philosophy, Sociology and Social Psychology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, where she also wrote her doctoral thesis on “Tod und Bild” under the supervision of Bernhard Waldenfels as a Fellow of the DFG Research Training Group “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics” in 1993. Iris Därmann was awarded the venia legendi in Philosophy and Cultural History and Theory by the University of Lüneburg in 2003 after her thesis “Die vertagte Indianisierung Europas”. As a Visiting Fellow at the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies Vienna and as Guest Lecturer at the Leibniz Prize Research Centre “Cultural Theory and Political Theory of the Imaginary” of the University of Konstanz, she analyzed the cultural margins and conditions of political philosophy, ranging from antiquity to the present. As a Fellow at the Centre of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” of the University of Konstanz, between 2007-2008 she worked on developing an ordinary-culture-theory on the basis of The Gift by Marcel Mauss and its reception in France.
From October 2009 until October 2011 she was President of the German Society for Phenomenological Research and organized the International Conference: “Force of Things. Things, Gegenstände, and Objects in Phenomenology“, since April 2010 member of the Advisory Council of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities III. As for the winter term 2010/11, Iris Därmann has received an invitation as a Fellow at the International Centre for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Thomas Macho is professor of Cultural Theory and History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He worked on the philosophy of music, on the metaphors of death and on issues in cultural history. Thomas Macho co-founded the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Cultural Techniques at the Humboldt-Universität and was spokesperson of the DFG-Research Group »Bild – Schrift – Zahl«. Since 2009 he has been member of the scientific advisory board of the International Research Institute »Morphomata – Genese, Dynamik und Medialität kultureller Figurationen« at the University of Cologne. Within Topoi, Thomas Macho is involved in the Cross-Sectional Group II ‘Histories and Genealogies of Culture Theories.’
Hartmut Böhme is Professor for Cultural Theory and the History of Mentalities at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. After his dissertation on Robert Musil in 1973, he worked as a professor for Modern German Literature at the Universität Hamburg from 1977 onwards. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen. In the years 1996, 1998 and 2008 he worked as visiting professor in the U.S. and Japan. His pioneering studies helped to position Cultural History and Theory within the “concert of disciplines”. From 2009 until 2010 Böhme was a Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy in Weimar, he was awarded the Hans-Kilian-Award in 2011. As a founder and coordinator of the Collaborative Research Centre 644: “Transformations of Antiquity” he has contributed significantly to all aspects of the afterlife of antiquity and the pivotal role these ideas played in the construction of the cultural canon. With Iris Därmann he has founded the CSG-II within TOPOI which could thus profit from his expertise in the history of cultural theory and the reception of antiquity.
His further research interests include: the theory of space, the history of knowledge, and the correlation between literature and visual art. Alongside his research on the cultural history of nature and the elements, the anthropology of the senses and emotions, Hartmut Böhme took an alternative stance on the history of Modernity in the form of a highly regarded study on the history and theory of fetishism.