Intellectual and cultural history

Die zeithistorische Studie beschäftigt sich mit Entwicklung und Wandel des Mitbestimmungsdiskurses in der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) von 1945 bis 1980. Hierbei stehen insbesondere die Sonderrolle der MPG als außeruniversitäre Forschungseinrichtung, ihre rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) sowie gesellschaftspolitische Kontexte wie etwa die westdeutsche Studentenbewegung im Mittelpunkt, die eine Institutionalisierung und Formalisierung von Partizipationsforderungen erzeugten. Ein Spezifikum der MPG in diesem Prozess ist ihre Sonderstellung als Tendenzbetriebund privatrechtlicher Verein sowie die Autonomie der einzelnen Institute und ihrer Direktor*innen, die die Mitbestimmungsforderungen lange Zeit erfolgreich abwehren und dadurch einen gemäßigten Mittelweg im Unterschied zu paritätischen Beteiligungsmodellen an den Hochschulen oder in Wirtschaftsunternehmen einschlagen konnten. Daraus entstanden informelle wissenschaftliche Partizipationskulturen an den Max-Planck-Instituten wie auch eine institutionalisierte Mitberatung, nicht jedoch eine von vielen Wissenschaftler*innen und Betriebsratsmitgliedern geforderte erweiterte formalisierte Mitbestimmung in den zentralen Gremien der MPG.

This essay tackles Romania’s geocultural position and its consequences for localizing Romanian literature in South-Eastern rather than Eastern Europe by comparing critically the implicit ideological dimension of three types of imaginary spatial narratives: the historian Nicolae Iorga’s (1871–1940), the folklorist and comparatist D. Caracostea’s (1879–1964), and the literary critic Mircea Muthu’s (b. 1944). I chose these three perspectives because they illustrate the way different disciplines looked at Romanian culture’s geographical and symbolical location on the European map during the 20th century. These three contributed to the perception of Romanian culture as part of a South-Eastern cultural heritage. Originating in these ideological representations, there is a parallel tradition in Romanian literature that configures also a Southern identity. More than just a side note to the Eastern European framework still dominant in literary studies, to rethink the location of Romanian literature as a South-Eastern European one means to imagine an alternative paradigm that has different political consequences for configuring a more complex geocultural identity.

Table des matières: CHARLES SAMARAN, Comment je suis devenu casanoviste avec  Postface de Stefano Feroci; ROBERTO MUSÌ, I viaggi di Casanova a Napoli; MARCO LEEFLANG, Ma Waldestein, Casanova and Caroline; ADRIANO CONTINI, Casanova e Wikipedia; GERARD PIGNÉ, Giacomo Casanova et moi. Autour du site www.le-petit-casanoviste.fr; HARTMUT PABLO GÜNTHER, With Deux Chevaux on Casanova Tour:
about the website www.giacomo-casanova.de; BRANKO ALEKSIC´, Dans la cinematographie casanovienne. Le «Dernier amour» appelle le «premier»;  GIANLUCA SIMEONI, Bibliographical Notes: 2013-2016 & Addenda; FURIO LUCCICHENTI Enrico Straub (1935-2018); Notes and Queries ; Abstracts ;The Authors ;List of subscribers and libraries.

Historiography as history. Gioacchino Volpe (and his surroundings)

In this contribution an interpretation of Enzo Cervelli's investigation into the figure of historian Gioacchino Volpe is advanced. Cervelli’s Volpe, it is argued, is seen as a prism through which to reconstruct the history of Italian culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notably in its ideological aspects of anticipation of Fascism. Cervelli was able to discern, across the whole of Volpe’s historiography, a number of topics, such as nation and nationalism, the generational discourse, the missed encounter with Marxism, the historiographic irrationalism, the autobiographical subjectivity, some of which elaborated decades before the maistream research did. By leveraging on these issues, Cervelli traced a complex and labyrinthine fresco of Italian and European culture during the late liberal age and Fascism, which took its cue from a historical question of an essentially political nature.

In questo contributo si propone una interpretazione dell’indagine di Enzo Cervelli sulla figura di Gioacchino Volpe, vista come un prisma attraverso il quale ricostruire la storia della cultura italiana tra Otto e Novecento nei suoi aspetti ideologici di anticipazione del fascismo. Attraverso l’individuazione, nell’analisi della produzione volpiana, dei temi della nazione, del discorso generazionale nel mancato incontro con il marxismo, dell’irrazionalismo storiografico, della soggettività autobiografica – alcuni dei quali elaborati con decenni di anticipo rispetto ai tempi della ricerca – Cervelli tracciava un complesso e labirintico affresco della cultura italiana ed europea fra età liberale e fascismo, che prendeva le mosse da un problema storico di natura essenzialmente politica.

The present study is the translation of Chapter 3 of the book of Ildikó Sz. Kristóf, entitled “Ördögi mesterséget nem cselekedtem.” A boszorkányüldözés társadalmi és kulturális háttere a kora újkori Debrecenben és Bihar vármegyében (“I have not done any diabolic deeds.” The Social and Cultural Foundation of Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Debrecen and Bihar County) published in Debrecen, Hungary in 1998. The book examined the witch-hunting in Bihar county and its largest city, the headquarters of the Calvinist church in Eastern Hungary between 1575 and 1766. During this period, 217 trials were conducted against 303 accused, and the book explored the social and religious foundations of the accusations. The witch-hunts in Bihar county were of rather small size (1–3 accused per annum) and intensity. A possible explanation for this relative mildness could be provided by a complex consideration of legal, religious, and local social circumstances. Chapter 3, published here in English, discusses Hungarian Calvinist demonology which remained rather sceptical about the concepts of diabolical witchcraft (e.g., the “covenant” or pact with the devil, the witches’ attendance at regular meetings (sabbath), etc.) throughout the early modern era. The author has studied several Calvinist treatises of theology published between the late 16th and the early 18th century by the printing press of Debrecen, those, for example, of Péter Mélius (1562), Tamás Félegyházi (1579), Péter Margitai Láni (1617), János Kecskeméti Alexis (1621), Mátyás Nógrádi (1651), Johannes Mediomontanus (1656), Pál Csehi (1656), István Diószegi Kis (1679; 1681), Gellért Kabai Bodor (1678) and Imre Pápai Páriz (1719). According to her findings, Calvinist demonology, although regarded the wordly interventions of the devil of limited scope (excepting, perhaps, the Puritans of the 1650s/1680s), urged the expurgation of the various forms of everyday magic from urban and village life. The suspicion of witchcraft fell especially on the practitioners of benevolent magic (popular healers/”wise women”, midwives, fortune-tellers, etc.) who were presumed to challenge and offend divine providence. The official religious considerations sometimes seem to have coincided with folk beliefs and explanations of misfortune concerning, among others, the plague epidemic in which witchcraft played an important role.

El presente trabajo examina sucesivos procesos de modernización urbana de Caracas, con especial énfasis en la llamada "ciudad burguesa", correspondiente al periodo comprendido entre las últimas décadas del siglo XIX, con la incorporación de la sociedad venezolana al capitalismo internacional y las primeras del siglo XX, cuando bajo los auspicios de la economía petrolera el país desarrolló un proceso acelerado de modernización y metropolitanización. Los cambios en la cultura urbanística y la apariencia de la capital venezolana se analizan a través de tres variables explicativas: territorio, arquitectura y espacio urbano.
This paper examines successive processes of urban modernization in Caracas, with special emphasis on the so-called "bourgeois city" during the period between the last decades of the nineteenth century -with the incorporation of Venezuelan society into international capitalism- and the first of the century XX -when under the auspices of the oil economy the country developed an accelerated process of modernization and metropolitanization. The changes in urban culture and the appearance of the Venezuelan capital are analyzed through three explanatory variables: territory, architecture and urban space.

Cultural heritage is an essentially contested concept. It is also a key concept in the heritage sector and museum sector. In my research and teaching, I have investigated plans, projects and programs within the heritage sector in Denmark, Norway and Sweden from the turn of the millennium onwards. I have identified different concepts of cultural heritage that are used in current heritage practices. These concepts are wholly or partially incompatible. In my introduction to the panel discussion at the regional heritage seminar, I will present these differing concepts in today’s heritage sector and discuss the value of gaining knowledge about the history of ideas of cultural heritage.

PREFACE
This is the story of an intoxicating idea and its sobering consequences.
The twentieth century brought a new cultural confidence in the social powers of invention – along with consumerism, world wars, globalization, and human-generated climate change. This book traces how passive optimism and active manipulations were linked to our growing trust in technological innovation. It pursues the evolving idea through engineering hubris, radical utopian movements, science fiction fanzines, policy-maker soundbites, corporate marketing, and consumer culture. It explores how evangelists of technological fixes have proselytized their faith and critically examines the examples and products of their followers.
The new technological confidence mixed together beliefs that were simultaneously compelling and unsettling. As motor vehicles, electricity supplies, and radio became part of modern life in the early decades of the century, it was hard to argue against the transformative effects and inevitability of such transitions. Like it or not, social consequences seemed to come inexorably with the Machine Age, the Space Age, and the Information Age. This deterministic vision implied an ever more technological future with unavoidable social consequences.
For many, innovative technologies promised appealing new lifestyles and powers. But for a narrower band of proponents – the first generation of technological fixers – wise engineering invention was touted as a guaranteed route to positive human benefits and societal progress. Socially engaged engineers and designers argued that such improvements could be directed, hastened, and amplified.
These engineering adventurers argued that modern societies could be guided only by rational designers. They contended that clever technological solutions could solve contemporary problems better than any traditional method, including economic initiatives, citizen education, political ideology, lifestyle changes, legal frameworks, and moral guidance.
Their seductive claims were tamed by more mainstream American enthusiasts and were eventually boiled down to the concept of the “technological fix.” Their shared confidence infused policy-makers, broadcasters, and science popularizers. Trust in technological fixes shaped a new generation of managers and lawmakers, engineers and educators, futurists and citizens – and continues to drive a new generation of techno-fixers today. This cultural wave, its promoters and detractors, have championed the promise and voiced concerns that we have inherited, still unresolved.
This book tracks the hubristic influencers and weighs up the confidences and concerns associated with them: the dramatic potential for novel technologies to work alongside longer human traditions to meet our enduring ambitions – or to reshape society for the worse.

A conversation between Leila Beanni, Patricius ShOOOmaker, and Sylvia Wang. (instigated by Hakan Topal).

The meeting took place at the London Serpentine Galleries’ bathrooms in the summer of 2016. During the three-hour-long gathering, a curator, an artist, and an architect locked themselves in the bathroom very early in the morning. It was an appropriation of a Brutally Early Morning™ meeting to discuss some of the most pressing cultural and political issues of our times. This candid conversation was later edited to fit into the format of this article.

A paraître dans les Actes du colloque international « Autour de la Bibliothèque virtuelle du Mont Saint-Michel. État des recherches sur l'ancienne bibliothèque monastique », dir. Marie Bisson et Stéphane Lecouteux, Avranches - Mont Saint-Michel, 5-7 septembre 2018

Partendo da alcune suggestioni di Bourdieu, Hobsbawm e Simmel e utilizzando gli strumenti metodologici della storia culturale e intellettuale, il saggio opera una prima ricognizione attorno al ruolo dei pittori paesaggisti nella costruzione dell'identità territoriale in provincia di Terra d'Otranto tra '800 e '900.

In its resolution 3.325 (14th General Conference, Paris, 1966), the UNESCO determined that “in order to contribute to the study, presentation and mutual appreciation of cultures […], the Director-General is authorized to undertake the study of Latin American cultures as expressed in their literature and art and so to establish their characteristics”. To comply with this resolution, the editorial collection Latin America in its Culture was initiated under the coordination of Argentinian poet and essayist César Fernández Moreno, later to become director of the UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean (Havana, Cuba). A volume on literature (1972, directed by Fernandez himself) was followed in 1978 by a volume on art under the direction of Argentinian art historian Damián Bayón. Combining analysis of the books and of the intellectual trajectories of Fernández and Bayón with extensive archival material, this investigation aims at examining the contribution of the UNESCO editorial collection to an intellectual Latin American culture network in which the national, the regional and the global were coexisting spheres of historical thinking. It suggests that regional artistic identity should be read here less as an aspiration to an ontology and more as the result of a deliberate political effort towards international dialogue. May the current transregional efforts in Art History bypass national and regional identities? Or rather, quoting the above mentioned 1966 resolution, is establishing local specificity still imperative for a “mutual appreciation of cultures”?

Knowledge and the Early Modern City uses case studies from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to examine the relationships between knowledge and the city and how these changed in a period when the nature and conception of both was drastically transformed.

Both knowledge formation and the European city were increasingly caught up in broader institutional structures and regional and global networks of trade and exchange during the early modern period. Moreover, new ideas about the relationship between nature and the transcendent, as well as technological transformations, impacted upon both considerably. This book addresses the entanglement between knowledge production and the early modern urban environment while incorporating approaches to the city and knowledge in which both are seen as emerging from hybrid networks in which human and non-human elements continually interact and acquire meaning. It highlights how new forms of knowledge and new conceptions of the urban co-emerged in highly contingent practices, shedding a new light on present day ideas about the impact of cities on knowledge production and innovation.

Providing the ideal starting point for those seeking to understand the role of urban institutions, actors and spaces in the production of knowledge and the development of the so-called ‘modern’ knowledge society, this is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern history and knowledge.