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This article investigates a public debate in Germany that put a special spotlight on the interaction of standard language ideologies with social dichotomies, centering on the question of whether Kiezdeutsch, a new way of speaking in multilingual urban neighbourhoods, is a legitimate German dialect. Based on a corpus of emails and postings to media websites, I analyse central topoi in this debate and an underlying narrative on language and identity. Central elements of this narrative are claims of cultural elevation and cultural unity for an idealised standard language High German', a view of German dialects as part of a national folk culture, and the construction of an exclusive in-group of German' speakers who own this language and its dialects. The narrative provides a potent conceptual frame for the Othering of Kiezdeutsch and its speakers, and for the projection of social and sometimes racist deliminations onto the linguistic plane.
On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to fight the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO). Between August 1982 and February
1984, the US, France, Britain and Italy deployed a Multinational
Force (MNF) to Beirut. Its task was to act as an interposition force to
bolster the government and to bring peace to the people. The
mission is often forgotten or merely remembered in context with
the bombing of US Marines’ barracks. However, an analysis of the
Italian contingent shows that the MNF was not doomed to fail and
could accomplish its task when operational and diplomatic efforts
were coordinated. The Italian commander in Beirut, General Franco
Angioni, followed a successful approach that sustained neutrality,
respectful behaviour and minimal force, which resulted in a
qualified success of the Italian efforts.
The German Sonderweg thesis has been discarded in most research fields. Yet in regards to the military, things differ: all conflicts before the Second World War are interpreted as prelude to the war of extermination between 1939–1945. This article specifically looks at the Franco-Prussian War 1870–71 and German behaviour vis-à-vis regular combatants, civilians and irregular guerrilla fighters, the so-called francs-tireurs. The author argues that the counter-measures were not exceptional for nineteenth century warfare and also shows how selective reading of the existing secondary literature has distorted our view on the war.
The focus in this article, through a reading of the German-Australian
newspaper Der Kosmopolit, is on the legacies of entangled imperial
identities in the period of the nineteenth-century German
Enlightenment. Attention is drawn to members of the liberal
nationalist generation of 1848 who emigrated to the Australian
colonies and became involved in intellectual activities there. The
idea of entanglement is applied to the philosophical orientation
of the German-language newspaper that this group formed, Der
Kosmopolit, which was published between 1856 and 1957. Against
simplistic notions that would view cosmopolitanism as the
opposite of nationalism, it is argued that individuals like Gustav
Droege and Carl Muecke deployed an entangled ‘cosmo-
nationalism’ in ways that both advanced German nationalism and
facilitated their own engagement with and investment in
Australian colonial society.
Across currents
(2017)
Affect Disposition(ing)
(2018)
The “affective turn” has been primarily concerned not with what affect is, but what it does. This article focuses on yet another shift towards how affect gets organized, i.e., how it is produced, classified, and controlled. It proposes a genealogical as well as a critical approach to the organization of affect and distinguishes between several “affect disposition(ing) regimes”—meaning paradigms of how to interpret and manage affects, for e.g., encoding them as byproducts of demonic possession, judging them in reference to a moralistic framework, or subsuming them under an industrial regime. Bernard Stiegler’s concept of psychopower will be engaged at one point and expanded to include social media and affective technologies, especially Affective Computing. Finally, the industrialization and cybernetization of affect will be contrasted with poststructuralist interpretations of affects as events.
Der Artikel arbeitet an Platons Gastmahl ein semantisches Netz rund um das Konzept des ‚Berührens‘ heraus. Dabei bildet das Verb ἅπτομαι ein zentrales Relais, das zwischen dem vieldiskutierten ‚philosophischen Gehalt‘ des Textes und der in ihrem performativen Beitrag meist unterschätzten Rahmenhandlung vermittelt. Im Nachvollzug der Konstellationen des Berührens zeigt sich, dass dem Berühren, als Berühren, nicht begrifflich beizukommen ist – es entzieht sich dem aneignenden Zugriff. Berühren ist eben nicht Begriff. Deshalb muss sich das Gastmahl der Berührung auf andere Weise nähern, nämlich berührend – wofür die narratologische Konstruktion des Textes von entscheidender Wichtigkeit ist. Er praktiziert Philo-Logie, d.h. nutzt die Macht der Worte, die genau daraus entsteht, dass sie in einer sehr präzisen Weise zwischen den Beteiligten aus einer konstitutiven Distanz heraus wirken.
This essay sets out to theorize the “new” Arctic Ocean as a pivot from
which our standard map of the world is currently being
reconceptualized. Drawing on theories from the fields of Atlantic
and Pacific studies, I argue that the changing Arctic, characterized
by melting ice and increased accessibility, must be understood
both as a space of transit that connects Atlantic and Pacific worlds
in unprecedented ways, and as an oceanic world and contact
zone in its own right. I examine both functions of the Arctic via a
reading of the dispute over the Northwest Passage (which
emphasizes the Arctic as a space of transit) and the contemporary
assessment of new models of sovereignty in the Arctic region
(which concentrates on the circumpolar Arctic as an oceanic
world). However, both of these debates frequently exclude
indigenous positions on the Arctic. By reading Canadian Inuit
theories on the Arctic alongside the more prominent debates, I
argue for a decolonizing reading of the Arctic inspired by Inuit
articulations of the “Inuit Sea.” In such a reading, Inuit conceptions
provide crucial interventions into theorizing the Arctic. They also,
in turn, contribute to discussions on indigeneity, sovereignty, and
archipelagic theory in Atlantic and Pacific studies.
Der Beitrag zeigt in einem ersten Schritt, dass die "Absurda comica" ein theologisches Gleichnis darstellt, in dem der König die Rolle Gottes, Pickelhäring die Rolle des Teufels und die Handwerker die Rolle des Menschen übernehmen. Schlüssel für dieses Gleichnis ist Lk 9.60 und Mt 8.22, wo Christus von seinen Jüngern fordert, "die Toten ihre Toten begraben zu lassen", d.h. sich vom Reich der Welt abzuwenden. Auf die "Absurda comica" übertragen, besagt dies, dass die Handwerker die Rollenhaftigkeit und die Narrheit ihrer Existenz erkennen müssen, wenn sie vor Gott gerechtfertigt werden wollen. In einem zweiten Schritt wird gezeigt, dass die "Absurda comica" als ein solches Gleichnis in der Tradition der Fastnachtspiele steht, deren Funktion eben dieser Aufweis der menschlichen Narrheit war. Das protestantische Schuldrama trat dabei bewusst in die Tradition dieser Fastnachtspiele, wie sich gerade an der "Absurda comica" zeigen lässt. In einem dritten Schritt wird diese These in einem Vergleich mit Jacob Masens "Rusticus imperans" und Christian Weises "Tobias und die Schwalbe" bestätigt.
Das Drama des 17. Jahrhunderts steht nicht in einem ästhetischen, sondern als Argument in einem sozialen, politischen oder, in der Sprache der Zeit, moralphilosophischen Kontext. Ein erster Teil des Aufsatzes zeigt, dass die Poetik in der aristotelischen Schulphilosophie als Teil der Logik, das heißt der Argumentationstheorie im weitesten Sinne galt, und die Dichtung selbst somit als Anwendung einer argumentativen Form. Ein zweiter Teil zeigt an drei Beispielen, dass diese logische, argumentationstheoretische Auffassung des Dramas auch den Poetiken der Zeit zugrunde liegt. Ein dritter Teil führt an einigen Dramen (u.a. Gryphius’ „Catharina von Georgien“, Masens „Androphilus“ und Birkens „Silvia“) kurz vor, in welcher Form sie als Argument zu verstehen sind. Der vierte Teil zeigt, dass die Auffassung des Dramas als Argument ihren sozialhistorischen Kontext im Schultheater hat. Ein letzter Teil widmet sich der Frage, was nach Überzeugung der Frühen Neuzeit die Eigentümlichkeit des Dramas ausmacht, wenn es sich als Argument nicht von anderen Argumentationsformen unterscheidet.
In recent years, the category of evidentiality has also come into use for the description of Romance languages and of German. This has been contingent on a change in its interpretation from a typological category to a semantic-pragmatic category, which allows an application to languages lacking specialised morphemes for the expression of evidentiality. We consider evidentiality to be a structural dimension of grammar, the values of which are expressed by types of constructions that code the source of information which a speaker imparts. If we look at the situation in Romance languages and in German, drawing a boundary between epistemic modality and evidentiality presents problems that are difficult to solve. Adding markers of the source of the speaker's knowledge often limits the degree of responsibility of the speaker for the content of the utterance. Evidential adverbs are a frequently used means of marking the source of the speaker's knowledge. The evidential meaning is generalised to marking any source of knowledge, what can be regarded as a result of a process of pragmaticalisation. The use of certain means which also carry out evidential markings can even contribute to the blurring of the different kinds of evidentiality. German also has modal verbs which in conjunction with the perfect tense of the verb have a predominantly evidential use (sollen and wollen). But even here the evidential marking is not without influence on the modality of the utterance. The Romance languages, however, do not have such specialised verbs for expressing evidentiality in certain contexts. To do this, they mark evidentiality - often context bound - by verb forms such as the conditional and the imperfect tense. This article shall contrast the different architectures used in expressing evidentiality in German and in the Romance languages.
Forging an Italian hero?
(2018)
Over the last two decades, Amedeo Guillet (1909–2010) has been turned into a public and military hero. His exploits as a guerrilla leader in Italian East Africa in 1941 have been exaggerated to forge a narrative of an honourable resistance against overwhelming odds. Thereby, Guillet has been showcased as a romanticized colonial explorer who was an apolitical and timeless Italian officer. He has been compared to Lawrence of Arabia in order to raise his international visibility, while his genuine Italian brand is perpetuated domestically. By elevating him to an official role model, the Italian Army has gained a focal point for military heroism that was also acceptable in the public memory as the embodiment of a ‘glorious’ defeat narrative.
This paper offers an exploratory Interactional Linguistic account of the role that inferences play in episodes of ordinary conversational interaction. To this end, it systematically reconsiders the conversational practice of using the lexico-syntactic format oh that's right to implicitly claim "just-now" recollection of something previously known, but momentarily confused or forgotten. The analyses reveal that this practice typically occurs as part of a larger sequential pattern that the participants orient to and which serves as a procedure for dealing with, and generating an account for, one participant's production of an inapposite action. As will be shown, the instantiation and progressive realization of this sequential procedure requires local inferential work from the participants. While some facets of this inferential work appear to be shaped by the particular context of the ongoing interaction, others are integral to the workings of the sequence as such. Moreover, the analyses suggest that participants' understanding of oh that's right as embodying an implicit memory claim rests on an inference which is based on a kind of semantic-pragmatic compositionality. The paper thus illustrates how inferences in conversational interaction can be systematically studied and points to the merits of combining an interactional and a linguistic perspective.
Khal Torabully
(2017)
Khal Torabully creates poetry and a poetics for those forgotten by history, a theorem and theory which construct a tangible and sensual landscape, allowing for an empathetically shared experience and expressing the dramatic climax of the third phase of accelerated globalization: a project that would be unthinkable without the cultural theory we now have at our disposal in the present surge of globalization. In his poetic and theoretical texts, he has paid a literary tribute to the Coolies, usually from India, but also China and many other countries. Given Torabully’s Mauritian roots, but also the worldwide migration of the Coolies themselves, the world of Coolitude is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse, making the act of translation very relevant and giving it multiple meanings. Literature brings these forgotten lives back to life and allows us to share this experience thanks to its aesthetic force. It traces the movements, which sketch trajectories functioning to this day as palimpsest-like vectors of our own paths and trajectories. The author of Chair Corail, Fragments Coolies breaks the chain of mutual exclusions, replacing it with a type of writing belonging to a wider array of expressive modes which in diasporic situations unleash polylogical and archipelagic imaginaries.
Madness and Sense
(2015)
Magic screens
(2016)
Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca, for several centuries doubtlessly the most discussed and most eminent writer of Andean America in the 16th and 17th centuries, throughout his life set the utmost value on the fact that he descended matrilineally from Atahualpa Yupanqui and from the last Inca emperor, Huayna Capac. Thus, both in his person and in his creative work he combined different cultural worlds in a polylogical way. (1) Two painters boasted that very same Inca descent - they were the last two great masters of the Cuzco school of painting, which over several generations of artists had been an institution of excellent renown and prestige, and whose economic downfall and artistic marginalization was vividly described by the French traveller Paul Mancoy in 1837.(2) While, during the 18th century, Cuzco school paintings were still much cherished and sought after, by the beginning of the following century the elite of Lima regarded them as behind the times and provincial, committed to an 'indigenous' painting style. The artists from up-country - such was the reproach - could not keep up with the modern forms of seeing and creating, as exemplified by European paragons. Yet, just how 'provincial', truly, was this art?
In an overt visual priming experiment, we investigate the role of orthography in native (L1) and non-native (L2) processing of German morphologically complex words. We compare priming effects for inflected and derived morphologically related prime-target pairs versus otherwise matched, purely orthographically related pairs. The results show morphological priming effects in both the L1 and L2 group, with no significant difference between inflection and derivation. However, L2 speakers, but not L1 speakers, also showed significant priming for orthographically related pairs. Our results support the claim that L2 speakers focus more on surface-level information such as orthography during visual word recognition. This can cause orthographic priming effects in morphologically related prime-target pairs, which may conceal L1-L2 differences in morphological processing.
Recollecting bones
(2018)
This article critically engages with the different politics of memory involved in debates over the restitution of Indigenous Australian ancestral remains stolen by colonial actors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and brought to Berlin in the name of science. The debates crystallise how deeply divided German scientific discourses still are over the question of whether the historical and moral obligations of colonial injustice should be accepted or whether researchers should continue to profess scientific disinterest'. The debates also reveal an almost unanimous disavowal of Indigenous Australian knowledges and mnemonic conceptions across all camps. The bitter ironies of this disavowal become evident when Indigenous Australian quests for the remains of their ancestral dead lost in the limbo of German scientific collections are juxtaposed with white Australian (fictional) quests for the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt, lost in the Australian interior.