Varieties of Cultural Selfassertion-Past and Present: With a Focus on Germany and East Asia

今年是整个项目的最后一年：我们工作的重点是评估我们最近的研究结果和关于方法论主题的辩论。由于这个原因，在非欧洲世界地区，特别是东亚，关于文化独特性主张（关于“自我表现”的话语）的讨论走向了不同的方向：美学在这些关于民族或文化独特性的话语中扮演了什么角色？这些论述是如何影响科学史的？社群主义的独特特征及其对生活行为形式的影响如何？此外，我们还讨论了另一组复杂的问题，即关于欧洲哲学家的工具化策略；神学反思作为自我主张的设计；关于自我的智性话语与非智性生活领域（如服装、饮食习惯、生活设计等）之间的关系；东亚各国关于自决的论述的交流；旅游文学的影响。考虑到方法论领域，与会者一致认为，尽管在这些话语中使用西方概念来捍卫文化独特性或证明东亚相对于西方的文化优越性，但对意识形态的批评往往与文化自我取向的话语结合在一起，不足以获得正确的理解。相反，人们必须重新考虑“多重现代性”的问题，这是对这些话语进行仔细调查的结果：对这些问题进行更详细的分析将是未来研究的任务。这一点很重要，因为人们可以克服文化本质主义和文化建构主义之间相当乏味的对比。此外，我们认识到，“记忆的地方”的范式可能是一个最刺激的方法，更深入地理解文化自我主张的话语。少

This year has been the last of the project as a whole: The focus of our work was on the evaluation of the results of our recent research and on the debate on methodological subjects. Due to this reason the discussion on the assertions of cultural uniqueness (discourses on "Selbstbehauptung") in non-European world regions, especially in East Asia, went into various directions: What part did esthetics play in those discourses about national or cultural uniqueness? How did thoses discourses influence the history of sciences? What about the distinctive character of communitarism and its impact on the forms of life conduct?Furthermore, we took up another set of complex issues for debate, i.e. the strategies of instrumentalization concerning European philosophers; the theological reflexions as a design for selfassertion; the relationship between intellectual discourses on selfassertion and non-intellectual spheres of life, i.e. cloths, eating habits, living design etc.; the interchange of th … More e discourses on selfassertion in various countries of East Asia; the impact of travel literature.Taking the field of methodology into consideration, participants agreed that a critique of ideologies which often come together with discourses on cultural selfassertion are not sufficient for a proper understanding, although in thoses discourses Western concepts are used in order to defend the cultural uniqueness or to proof the cultural superiority of East Asia compared to the West. Instead, one has to reconsider the problem of "multiple modernities" which comes out off a careful investigation of those discourses: It will be a task of future research to analyze these problems in much more detail. This is important in so far as one could overcome the rather uninspiring contrast between cultural essentialism and constructivism. Furthermore we recognized that the paradigm of the "places of memory" could be a most stimulating approach for a deeper understanding of the discourses of cultural selfassertion. Less