GRK 706: Cultural Hermeneutics: Reflections of Difference and Transdifference

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In the period of both globalization and the renewed interest of various groups in their cultural particularity, questions of difference (according to ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, sexual preference, class etc.) and of intercultural communication have become standard topics of research. Difference can be studied synchronically but also diachronically, i.e. with regard to changing or consecutive phases of individual and social development. The Graduiertenkolleg extends this scholarly perspective by focussing on what we term transdifference: the overlap of identifications, the combination of loyalties across boundaries and hence of identity facets resulting from the actual multiplicity of phenomena of difference and forms of interaction. Rather than concentrating on aspects of coherence and delimitation, the study group re-examines the terms culture, interculturality and (cultural) hermeneutics with the aim of transcending existing models of identity and alterity, while taking aspects like the power of definition and the order of societal organization into consideration. In this context transdifference is to be understood as an umbrella term for phenomena like hybridity, transculturality and transidentity (referring to systems as well as individuals).