University of Heidelberg

Our use of the term Public Sphere goes beyond the understanding of Habermas’s historically specific rational public sphere. His public sphere was exclusive with regard to its agents (e.g. no women, no uneducated, no subaltern classes), its addressee (only the state but no other entity or social group) and its scope (only within national borders, for an Asian critique of Habermas, see Dasgupta 2006; Muthukumaraswamy/Kaushal 2004; Bhargava/Reifeld 2005). In our attempt to understand particular transcultural phenomena or, to understand particular phenomena transculturally, we consider multiple Public Spheres in which (even socially and spatially distant) interlocutors (for example those of the Chinese diaspora in Germany or feminist artists all over the world) may formulate collective orientations or Social Imaginaries (cf. Andersen 1990 and Taylor 2004) and generate “working alliances” in pursuit of common concerns. In our understanding, then, public spheres are (open) networks of individuals and groups outside the structures and institutions of government (cf. Latour 1993; Latour 2007). The concerns of these public spheres are multiple, they are not restricted to politics but could just as well be based on economic (how best to create and sell a global hero?), artistic (how and where to stage public expositions?), or even everyday practices and concerns (how to be a super mom? cf. Mustafa Emirbayer & Mimi Sheller).

Asymmetry in our Research Area refers to an actor’s differential perception of a phenomenon: in order to perceive an asymmetry—a term which presupposes the idea of symmetry—it is always necessary to perceive the difference between two phenomena by relating them to one common denominator: that one culture has novels while another has haiku becomes apparent as an asymmetry only when it is related to a common denominator such as literature (with its own specific cultural baggage) and when one culture sees a need to adapt the other’s form; that one culture considers long hair feminine, while another would consider it a sign of masculinity, becomes apparent as an asymmetry only when both are related to a common denominator such as gender as defined in only one of the cultures. The very use of such denominators is a sign of economic, social, and cultural inequality as typical for, but not exclusive to, “colonial” societies (both in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word), for example.

Our research focuses on attempts to cope with such asymmetries and the dynamics which cause these asymmetries to shift (to take the example of Japan, the country’s visual artists or musicians would have been decried as uncreative copycats since the late nineteenth century, but nowadays they are acting as an internationally recognized pop-cultural avantgarde). These dynamics and the very process of cultural production never result in symmetry, homogenization and uniformization often associated with globalization, but rather in a myriad of distinct forms often entirely independent of and oblivious to their constituent parts.