University of Heidelberg

The development of the humanities and social sciences has come with powerful specializations in terms of space, time, and media. This resulted in an increase in our ability to handle original language sources. Yet, there are a number of problems that cross geographical, historical, and media borders. Meaning that the traditional concepts of culture based on territory, language, ethnicity and nation can no longer account for the intrinsic complexity, hybridity and diversity of human groups and their exchanges.

Understand Entangled Cultural Flows

Today, cultural flows and their entanglements have become even more evident and have increased by new media and transport systems. The Cluster, however, intends to show that they already existed in the past. Traces of this assumption can be found at many levels below the visible surface in the Ancient Near East and can be dated back to the Middle Ages. Key notions like “Europe”, “Antiquity”, or “Buddhism” are only meaningful if one considers the long-term and large-area cultural mixtures caused by migration of persons who carry practices, concepts and institutions.

Overcome Eurocentric Asymmetries

Moreover, a Eurocentric asymmetry prevailed for a long time in the “academic order of things”: The West provided the analytical tools, key terms and methods for the rest of the world. The West defined academic disciplines such as History, Art History, Anthropology or Indology – academic disciplines that were mostly established in the 19th century. In the 18th century, Europe still compared itself with other cultures, however by the 19th century it considered itself incomparable. Writings on Indian or Chinese history or philosophy were not writings on history or philosophy per se, rather they were about Indian tradition or Chinese wisdom. This intellectual ostracism regionalized, provincialized and even ghettoized certain cultures and academic quests.

Global Approaches for Global Challenges  

In short, our challenges have become global, but not our ways of dealing with them. We believe that a focus on transculturality will enable us to better understand the urgent challenges of our globalized age, with its cultural, social and political asymmetries. Lastly, we believe that with this approach, the humanitarian disciplines can contribute greatly to this field: namely to provide critical orientation in new worlds as well as old worlds.
    

Thus, the Cluster sets out to

1. provide a framework where a transcultural approach with a global perspective is at the center and not at the margin,
2. prefigure and promote a structural realignment of the humanities’ disciplines for which the time is ripe,
3. explore the global as a dimension in its own right and not just as the sum of territories or nation states,
4. develop  methodologies and  new ways of linking, integrating and interpreting the many textual, visual, and aural sources  that have to be validated in this context,
5. last but not least, work together with Asian scholars, rather than just on Asia.