The Transnational Circulation of Knowledge in the Work and the Reception of Hannah Arendts (Germany/USA)

本研究项目建立在政治哲学和科学社会学学科领域之间。它考察了从20世纪40年代中期到21世纪初，美国和（西）德国之间政治观念和知识分子汉娜·阿伦特（Hannah Arendt）思想的行为建构、翻译和转变过程。分析主要分为三个章节：汉娜·阿伦特《极权主义的起源》（1951）的出版历史和早期接受，关于艾希曼在耶路撒冷报告的辩论（1963），以及1989年破裂后对阿伦特政治理论的最新接受。本研究的目标是两个不同但又相互联系的目标：对理论活动的实证反思和对思想跨国流通的分析。基于社会学家皮埃尔·布迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的场域和实践分析模型，以及其他关于实践的哲学和民族志理论，哲学在过程相关和行为维度上得到了检验。因此，理论被认为是一种社会实践，是在不同的历史、社会和物质条件下发生的。理论涉及一群行动者。它调动了隐性和显性的知识形式，并具有社会和象征性的影响。该研究项目其次考察了思想的跨国流通，不同国家和语言之间翻译和转换理论的活动。跨国流通被看作是社会实践理论的一个重要方面。通过将理论翻译成不同的语言，我们不仅可以观察到理论意义的变化。最重要的是，翻译被理解为一种定义、挑战或跨越认知和物质边界的方法。因此，思想的翻译可以导致跨国思维和行动空间的建构或转变。主要的研究问题是：思想流通对理论及其社会背景的条件和影响是什么？为什么汉娜·阿伦特的人物形象会被采用、批评和理想化？这些人物与汉娜·阿伦特作品中的政治理论及其接受有何关系？从这个例子中，我们可以了解到智力和理论实践的功能是什么？

The research project is set up in-between the disciplinary areas of political philosophy and sociology of science. It examines processes of performative construction, translation and transformation of the idea of politics and of the intellectual figure Hannah Arendt between the USA and (West-) Germany, from the mid 1940s until the end of the 2000s. The analysis is structured along three main chapters: the history of the publication and early reception of Hannah Arendts The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the debate on the report Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) and the latest Reception of Arendts political theory after the ruptures of 1989. The study targets at two different but connected goals: the empirical reflection on theoretical activities and the analysis of the transnational circulation of ideas. Based on the model of field- and praxis-analysis of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and other philosophical and ethnographical theories of praxis, philosophy is examined in its process-related and performative dimension. Theory is thus considered as a social practice, which takes place under different historical, social and material conditions. Theory involves a collectivity of actors. It mobilizes implicit and explicit forms of knowledge, and it has social and symbolic impacts. The research project examines secondly the transnational circulation of ideas, the activity of translating and transforming theory between different countries and languages. The transnational circulation is seen as a crucial aspect of a social practice of theory. By translating theories into different languages, we can observe not only shifts in the meaning of theories. Above all, translation is understood as a method of defining, contesting or trespassing cognitive and material borders. The translation of ideas can thus lead to the construction or the transformation of transnational spaces of thinking and of acting. The main research questions are: Which are the conditions and the impacts of a circulation of ideas on theory and its social contexts? Why and how differently constructed figures of Hannah Arendt are adopted, criticized, idealized? How do these figures relate to the theory of politics in Hannah Arendts work and in its reception? What can be learned from this example about the functioning of intellectual, theoretical practices?