The First Kulturwissenschaft: An Intellectual Movement Emerging from Jewish Secularization
Thursday 19 December 2024 at 20h CET
Prof. em. Dr. Sigrid Weigel - Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Lecture in English. Lecture at the University of Antwerp, City Campus, room R.013, Rodestraat 14, Antwerp.
This lecture explores a fascinating intellectual movement that emerged around 1900, involving notable scholars such as Freud, Warburg, Simmel, and Benjamin, among others. Although these thinkers did not form a cohesive group and operated in diverse geographical and professional contexts, their works reveal striking similarities in theoretical perspectives, modes of thought, and an engagement with interdisciplinary and cross-cultural concepts. The focus of the lecture is on their ideas about culture and history, examining how their thoughts on space and time diverged from conventional knowledge frameworks and historical narratives centered on chronology and progress.
Predominantly hailing from the German-speaking assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie, many of these scholars shared a common interest in the afterlife (Nachleben) of mythical, religious, and cultic practices in the modern era, as well as the pagan and polytheistic heritage of European antiquity. Operating from positions on the periphery or outside the established academic system—less constrained by the usual disciplinary habits and categorical boundaries—they developed a mode of thinking that navigates transitions and the interstices of multiple cultural landscapes. This approach holds significant epistemological potential, remaining highly relevant to the challenges we face today.
Sigrid Weigel is former director of the Research Center for Literature and Culture (ZfL Berlin), prior professor at Hamburg, Zürich, TU Berlin, Princeton, and director of the Einstein Forum; honorary doctorates from Leuven, Buenos Aires, Tbilisi, Basel; honorary member of MLA, honorary president of the International Walter Benjamin Society; awardee of Aby-Warburg-Preis (2016). She published on Heine, Warburg, Freud, Benjamin, Scholem, Arendt, Susan Taubes, Bachmann, cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft), memory/ psychoanalysis, generation/genealogy, and cultures of sciences. Books in English: Body- and Image Space. Re-Reading Walter Benjamin (1996); “Escape to Life”: German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933 (Ed. 2012); Walter Benjamin. Images, the Creaturely, the Holy (2008/ English 2013); Empathy. Epistemic Problems and Cultural-Historical Perspectives (Ed. 2017); Testimony/ Bearing Witness. Epistemology, Ethics, History and Culture (Ed. 2017); Grammatology of Images (2015/ English 2022); Transnational Foreign Policy – Beyond National Culture (2019).
Universeller Humanismus - humaner Universalismus? Normgebende Figurationen zur Kritik von Antisemitismus
Internationale Vortragsreihe 2024/2025 in Hannover.
Gefördert durch: Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, VolkswagenStiftung, Hanns-Lilje-Stiftung, Klosterkammer Hannover, Niedersächsisches Justizministerium.
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Network member Arie M. Dubnov
The Jewish History Colloquium, George Washington University Judaic Studies Program: See https://judaic.columbian.gwu.edu/jewish-history-colloquium.
Network member Benjamin Balint
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Network member René Bloch
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