FOR 2600: Ambiguität und Unterscheidung: Historisch-kulturelle Dynamiken

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The DFG Research Unit 2600 “Ambiguity and Distinction. Historical and Cultural Dynamics” ties the concept of ambiguity to the concept of distinction. In doing so, it focuses on the ambiguity of gender, race, and religion. According to the Research Unit's hypothesis, it is in this relation between ambiguity and distinction that dynamics are triggered. The exploration of these dynamics opens up fundamentally new insights. At the same time, the Research Unit assumes that observers - be they persons, institutions, works of art, religions, etc. - repeatedly encounter phenomena that they cannot grasp with the distinctions with which they prefer to operate. The Research Unit's concept of ambiguity is thus strictly constructivist. Phenomena are not "inherently" ambiguous. Rather, ambiguity always exists only in observation. What one observer perceives and communicates as ambiguous can therefore be quite unambiguous for another. For the Research Unit, situations of ambiguity represent, as it were, "primal scenes" that force the respective actors to act on the ambiguity they perceive. Ambiguity opens up the possibility of following both sides of a distinction, so that the usual path dependencies are interrupted. The Research Unit is interested precisely in this openness of ambiguous situations and in the almost unpredictable dynamics they trigger. In its second funding period, the Research Unit focuses on interferences of ambiguities. It asks whether and how the ambiguity of one distinction influences the operation of another distinction. Do overlaps occur which reinforce or level contrasts at certain places, or with respect to certain phenomena? What interactions of ambiguities and the use of distinctions can be observed and what influence do these interferences have on the historical-cultural dynamics that emanate from ambiguity? Are there certain social relays that make such interference effects probable?By answering these questions, the Research Unit aims to differentiate the concept of ambiguity, which has so far mostly been used as a diagnosis of epochs or cultures, in order to use it to uncover the manifold and complex dynamics triggered by ambiguity.