Volume 19, Issue 2 -

This paper discusses the performativity of intercultural encounters and transcultural fields against the background of the leading theoretical concepts and models elaborated within the current cultural studies: cultural transfer, third space, contact zones, transdifference, moment of wonder. The aim is to propose a differentiated methodological approach to intercultural encounters based on the opposition between two different modes of performativity: paradoxical and hybrid.

Zusammenfassung Das Eigene und das Fremde – die vertraute Welt des christlichen Europa einerseits, die fremden Kulturen Indiens und Ostasiens andererseits – werden im Mittelalter strikt getrennt gedacht. Darstellungsmuster dieser Fremde sind monströse Lebewesen und andere „Wunder“, die im Osten bis zum Rand der Welt imaginiert werden. Das Erstaunliche des Finckenritter, eines parodistischen Reiseromans des 16. Jhdts. (um 1560), liegt darin, dass er den Dualismus von fremder und eigener Welt aufhebt und die Topoi der Fremde in die Vertrautheit der eigenen Welt verpflanzt. Damit schafft er die Möglichkeit einer Hybridisierung von Eigenem und Fremdem, welche einerseits neue Perspektiven von Kulturkontakten, andererseits ganz neue „moments of wonder“ (Greenblatt) eröffnet: eine prinzipielle Verkehrung von Sinn und Ordnung der Welt, der Wahrnehmung und der sozialen Kommunikation, die jede mögliche Orientierung des Lesers aufhebt.

For the World Exposition in Osaka (1970), architect Fritz Bornemann designed the German Pavilion, which focused the expo′s general theme “Peace and Progress” by means of avant-garde electronic and instrumental music, first and foremost by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The main auditorium was conceived as a globe to provide a completely new style of musical experience: the audience being surrounded by the music and able to follow the sound′s motion in a three-dimensional setting. Central part of Stockhausen′s daily concerts was his piece Hymnen for soloists and electronic tape in which he merged national anthems from all over the world with sounds from synthesizes and electronically modulated live-instruments. This union of opposites was intended to promote a changed consciousness of the listeners, culminating in Stockhausen′s so-called “Hymunion”, a utopian vision of world peace. This paper focuses on the different aspects of musical space in Stockhausen′s aesthetics and art – ranging from architectural conditions of contemporary music and compositional control of spatial moving music to spiritual settings of art. The question arises whether Bornemann′s architecture and Stockhausen′s music are able to facilitate the emergence of a contact zone.

In England, throughout the early modern period and beyond, the Rape of Lucretia served as a central intertext for literary and non-literary works engaging with the subject of transgression. Not only did legal tracts and social pamphlets prescribe a woman to behave analogously to Lucretia after rape in order to contest the innocence of her soul through her bodily performance. Allegorically, the legend′s iteration within new cultural contexts in contemporary English historiography and drama provided a powerful subtext with which national histories and identities were scripted according to a familiar plot structure in order to represent 'the Turk′ and thereby to interpret and control what was perceived to be a threat to English identity and sovereignty at a time of intensifying Anglo-Ottoman encounters. This paper not only demonstrates the re-staging of the Rape of Lucretia in different texts and contexts; it examines the way in which the national identities and cultural encounters are represented and performed through the legend in order to stage the self and the Other within the radical discourse of alterity in contemporary proto-orientalist contexts.

Among present creative practices, I feel two important criteria stand out: one is the crossover of different cultural and media elements in dialogical contexts; the other is the interaction of different views, attitudes and realities in processes of interactivity and virtuality wherein we experience variety and diversity beyond and across the dominant modes of homogenizing difference. Critical engagement beyond such polarities keeps cultural dialogue alive and inhabits the in-between zones with dynamic interaction in media landscapes. In this respect, radical artists′ practices will manifest themselves as creative interventions.

This paper starts by exploring contemporary perceptions of Thomas Dallam (born c. 1570, died after 1614), an English organ maker who is cast as a worthy predecessor of contemporary tourists. After considering the significance of such presentist styling of Dallam as an early 'director′ of an Orientalist gaze, the argument turns to Dallam′s account of his visit to the Ottoman court. While the asymmetry of power relations (Marie Louise Pratt) evident in Dallam′s description has been defused by the text′s popular reception in Britain, this paper participates in contemporary scholarly attempts at recontextualising Dallam′s travel account within its historical setting. A close reading of Dallam′s text establishes it as a poignant example of early modern cultural encounters “before Orientalism” (Richmond Barbour). Dallam′s text points to specific moments during which the performative character of the encounter disrupts textual closure and binary forms of signification. His account is truly remarkable for its representation of Dallam′s ongoing negotiation of both his experience of cultural encounter and of existing reductive preconceptions about Ottoman culture and society.

This paper explores how the concept of the 'contact zone′ (conceived by Mary Louise Pratt) can be extended by means of an issue which she does not mention: the physical shape and specific corporeal reactions of those acting in cultural encounters. By means of two case studies it will be questioned if and how ethnographers regard their body as an important constituent of 'contact zones′ generated by anthropological fieldwork ‒ and how concepts of performativity may serve to shed light on these particular interactions between the ethnographer′s body and its social environment. Therefore I will pay attention to the records in the diaries and letters of Franz Boas (1858–1942) und Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), since both scholars are wedded with the methodological scheme of 'participant observation′, which specifically claims the physical presence of the ethnographer by means of long standing fieldwork. With a 'performative′ view to their 'fieldwork performances′ it becomes clear that they, certainly without using the term, even regard and utilize their skin as a 'contact zone′: through the corporeal surface and its physical resistance they detect the haptic, olfactory and gustatory qualities of social life. Moreover, a performative′ view to the concept of the 'contact zone′, particularly against the background of this ethnological context, exposes the problem of the seminal methodological scheme of 'participant observation′.

For anthropologists who engage in encounter-based fieldwork, contact zones have a peculiar phenomenal quality that is often neglected by scholars from other disciplines who have taken up the fieldwork paradigm initially developed by ethnographers. In this paper, I want to elaborate how, in my most recent fieldwork in Syria, I experienced such zones, and I want to reflect on this experience and its relation to concepts and writing as it becomes knowledge. I define fieldwork as “the registering of sensory impressions in a (temporal) process of mutual subject-discovery and critique,” and anthropology as a “mode of engagement in generating knowledge and social and political action that enables ongoing relationships” (Borneman/Hammoudi 2009: 19). This picture of fieldwork and ethnography, in its stress on the author being in “a zone of contact with the world he is depicting” (Bakhtin 1981: 30), is at odds with understandings that focus on anthropology as a “cultural critique” of the West (Marcus/Fischer 1986), “creative and usable mappings” (Gupta/Ferguson 1997: 56), “comparison of embedded concepts” between societies (Asad 2003: 17), or interpretation of another culture (Geertz 1973).

Contemporary anthropological research requires innovation in method that can take the measure of consequential reflection by many subjects on knowledge production within their own domains and anticipate how a research project might connect productively with various discursive communities and networks given the increasing complexity of ethnographic scale and context. One such innovation, the para-site, addresses these challenges by enlisting reflexive subjects as epistemic partners in orchestrated interactions situated alongside ongoing fieldwork activities. Our experiment set the para-site in the “Green Room” of the World Trade Organization and employed linguistic anthropology to facilitate exchanges at the level of our ethnography′s guiding concepts.

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag versucht zu verstehen, wie die europäische Staatsbürgerschaft in den Wohnwagensiedlungen, die unter dem Namen Berliner Wagenburgen bekannt wurden, erlebt und geträumt wird. Die Ethik der Wagenburg versteht sich als entschlossen auf die Zukunft gerichtet, eine Zukunft, in der Teilen und Teilhabe neu definiert und Produktion, Konsum und respektvoller Umgang mit der Umwelt neu definiert werden müssen, aber Kompromisse und Zweideutigkeit sind ihr Alltag. Als möglicher Ort für das Entstehen von Beziehungen ohne Zwang, die dennoch Intimität zulassen, gibt so die Wagenburg Sicherheit in Bezug auf das, was dem Individuum gerade noch erlaubt sein kann bei dem Versuch, eine Ethik freidenkerischer Inspiration umzusetzen. Zugleich sieht sich diese Art von Kontaktzone mit Problemen ritualisierter Begegnungsabläufe, narzisstischer Projektionen und des Betrachtens des Anderen im Spiegel der eigenen Phantasien konfrontiert.

Globalization, Europeanization and migration are changing the character of big cities and their schools. Schools become contact zones for children and young people with different cultural backgrounds. In the subsequent cultural encounters, learning to cope with cultural diversity will be a central task of education in schools. In a school culture shaped by work, talk, games, and festivities, rituals play a central role in successful learning and forming companionships. In this process, mimetic and performative styles of learning gain particular importance for the development of transcultural education.

In this research project the concept of the contact zone is being extended to the field of school encounters, where the subjects in interactions are confronted with „the other“. Here, the contact zone is not restricted to be of colonial relatedness but focuses the power relations when dealing with one′s own and other′s types of perception and action. The clash with unfamiliar cultural influences can be categorized as a contact zone, if the situation is characterized by an uncommon or extraordinary interaction form. Thus the subjects are not entirely foreign to each other. Still the metaphor of the contact zone might be productive for the empirical field of interpreting practices in which pedagogical differences or confronting orientations emerge rather performatively in a way not planned didactically.

European ethnological museums usually administer not only exhibitions but also large archives. Visitors of the exhibitions generally do not get to know that the archived objects exist. As these objects are omitted and difficult to access they leave a blank position as Deborah Poole remarks. Decisions as to why objects are displayed or archived are an important matter in museum studies. James Clifford is challenging museums to integrate contact zones in their exhibitions. Ethnological museums contribute to intercultural encounter by allowing contact to their archives, opening exhibition spaces for performative play of children and reflecting collections and collectors in terms of postcolonial theory.

Zusammenfassung In diesem Aufsatz wird der Begriff der ,Kontaktzone‘ für den Bereich der psychischen Gesundheitsförderung entwickelt. Anhand von Datenmaterial, das aus einer chilenischen Gemeindepsychiatrie für die Mapuche stammt, wird erläutert, dass sich mit dem Begriff der ,Kontaktzone‘ mehr Dimensionen berücksichtigen lassen als mit dem sozialräumlichen Settingbegriff der Ottawa-Charta (WHO, 1986). Die beiden zentralen Konzepte der Charta, ,Empowerment‘ und ,Enablement‘, werden auf die mimetischen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen dem therapeutischen Setting und den Alltagskontexten seiner Nutzerinnen und Nutzer bezogen.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit dem Aussterben von Sprachen und dem gegenläufigen Prozess ihrer Revitalisierung. Es werden die Faktoren beschrieben, die zu Sprachtod führen können und verschiedene Szenarien des Sprachsterbens exemplifiziert. Schließlich wird der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Aussterben von Sprachen und Kontaktsituationen anhand des in diesem Band zentralen Begriffs der „Kontaktzone“ diskutiert.

The essay addresses Victor Turner′s radical approach to the study of ritual and in particular the creative and generative potential of liminal processes. Two objectives guide the analysis. The first is to develop an approach that is not over-constrained by the dramatic or theatrical metaphor of performance that dominates much discussion of ritual. The second is to reorient an approach to the liminal as a stage in a process in itself and to explore it in terms of the concept of the virtual. In other words, the liminal as thoroughly an opening of potential and innovative emergence, a major direction of Turner′s approach.

It is argued that the image of the Indian IT-Professional opens up a contact zone throughout the whole world and that it is a striking example for the structure and implications of a contact zone in the age of new media and world society. Based on the theoretical assumptions of world society (Luhmann, Stichweh), the emergence of the Indian IT-Professional as a national hero and transnational, worldwide icon of globalisation will be analysed through an indigenous perspective focussing on the Indian context itself and from a 'Western′ standpoint including observations from Germany and the U.S. The case of the contact zone established through the Indian IT-Professional shows that more than ever before in the globalised world society contact zones are established without the necessity for humans who participate in one of the involved different meaning systems to actually meet in the 'real′ world and yet that they react remarkably emotionally.

Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von Überlegungen zum Konzept der Kontaktzone von der Literaturwissenschaftlerin Mary Louise Pratt analysiert der Beitrag Filmszenen der US-Fernsehserie Shogun von 1980 und Sofia Coppolas Spielfilm Lost in Translation von 2003. Unter dem Begriff der Kontaktzone wird dabei ein Rezeptionsakt verstanden, der seine Geltungsansprüche an fluktuierende Zeichenprozesse knüpft. Eine Kontaktzone entsteht sowohl im Aufeinandertreffen von Akteuren verschiedener Kulturen als auch im Aufeinandertreffen kultureller Produkte und deren Publikum. In den Filmbeispielen erweist sich die Inszenierung von Gesten als zentrales Darstellungsmittel im interkulturellen Kontakt, das (in Lernprozessen) zwischen Aneignung und Unverfügbarkeit oszilliert.

Zusammenfassung Ziel dieses Beitrags ist die Untersuchung der Begriffe Politik, Macht und Potenz und die Analyse der zwischen ihnen bestehenden Unterschiede. Unter Bezug auf die antike Philosophie werden zentrale Dimensionen des Begriffs der Politik entwickelt. Davon wird der Begriff der Macht unterschieden und sein unterschiedliches Bedeutungsfeld wird entwickelt. Von beiden Begriffen wird unter Rückgriff auf Spinoza der Begriff der Potenz unterschieden. Ziel der Analyse ist die Rekonstruktion eines komplexen Begriffes der Politik, der Reduktionen vermeidet und den Herausforderungen der heutigen Welt gerecht wird.