University of Heidelberg

The Research Area "Historicities and Heritage" analyses different concepts of histories as competing interpretations of time and space. Instead of focusing on models of unified universal or world history, it will put the emphasis on the entanglement of multiple historicities with different cultural background through cultural flows in the way in which history, memory, and their trajectory are handled. This requires a critical dialogue with the disputes on historiography as a westernised/Eurocentric academic discipline, the idea of a multilingual global history, and the considerations of intangible cultural heritage. The main focus of Research Area D is on the way in which memories and heritage together with history as academic discipline emerge and spread within and between cultures, ordering and reordering knowledge and memory. The power and the authority to provide the past with significance and structure through a master narrative that also provides impetus and direction for the future is an excessively contested area not just between government and historical scholarship, but also through the potential of individuals, cohorts, subaltern groups or groups sharing particular experiences (e.g. women, men, collaborators, refugees) to configure their own memories in a challenge to a dominant master narrative. Among the most contested fields is the configuration of asymmetrical flows in such narratives and the resulting strategy to deal with them.

The Research Area confronts two concepts of history: that notion of history as a sequence of developmental stages in time, and the idea that historical significance shows up in a variety of different and sometimes opposed historicities (Jacques Rancière, Les noms de l’histoire, 1992). This last approach opens the way for the analysis of problems of transformation and rededication through which persons, objects, and concepts may undergo a complete change of their role and thus gain new historical meaning – for example, is a church still a church when labelled as a museum or a site of national significance? As a consequence, asymmetries in transcultural flows of knowledge can be interpreted as ongoing processes in which identities are transferred and new meanings are created, with the attribution of historical significance as an important component.

The Research Area will contribute to current debates on universal, global, international, transnational and/or world history by exploring the potential of concepts of transnationalism and entangled histories. Questions about the universality (or non-universality) of historical analysis in the light of the highly particular historical circumstances of its European origins are of particular importance, thus continuing the debate started with Chakrabarty’s “provincializing Europe” (Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 2000). The critical analysis of history as an instrument to fix differences and hierarchies in postcolonial debates coincides with a growing openness for the history of border-crossing processes (Gunilla Budde, Transnationale Geschichte, 2006), and of the global transfer of information and knowledge that is part of a new interest in global history and the history of the global, which has not yet been fully discussed. In the controversies surrounding the debate about the global, questions are raised whether global history is nothing but the history a “hyperreal Europe” that serves to define standards. Alternatively some have proposed that an analysis of the global with an adequate inclusion of Asia would discover a long-term asymmetry with stronger Asian flows towards Europe which have only temporarily been inverted (André Gunder Frank, ReOrient, 1998).

As the presumably universal European principles underlying the scholarly study of history have themselves been shown to be historically contingent, the integration of these theoretical debates concerning various forms of historicity is a major element within the present research design. In analysing asymmetrical cultural flows, the Research Area considers the ongoing discussions on historicities as an opportunity to introduce new methodologies and research strategies, not only to investigate the history of Asia and Europe, but also to reflect – not on a provincialised Europe, perhaps – but certainly on a spatialised one. Therefore, research is focused on the creation and the exchange of concepts of historical significance and the objects embodying it. Which kinds of histories are told by Asian manuscripts in European libraries and museums? Do these collections merely act as witnesses for the power of foreigners to collect trophies, do they document the history of looting and cultural loss, or do they help to understand the epistemological translatability of foreign cultural elements? What are the consequences of the confrontation between European historical development and Asian (not only, as Europeans also request this) demands to tell “different” histories?

When East and South Asian elites began to deal with “the West” and its history, they realised that while their culture might have a long and glorious past, it did not have a comparably systematised “history” with evolution, stages, and epochs. In Europe, the fundamental thought of the historicity of human existence beyond the framework of a specific salvation history developed as a part of a process of secularisation. Eventually this became the theoretical basis for the establishment of history as an academic discipline during the nineteenth century. As a consequence, various models to explain the progression of history were presented, each with its own catchwords. The well-known story of Western ascendancy was told in the form of the recently developed evolutionary narrative. This was to act as the leading paradigm of time, while the nation served as the leading paradigm of place. A successful national history based on evolutionary concepts seemed indispensable to secure a bright future as a rich and powerful nation. This notion of history as a generalised narrative of progress and modernity beyond all cultural specificities lost credibility when charges were voices that it was primarily a self-serving discourse imposed by elites with a strong commitment to a globalised model of development. Now the traditional ordering and reordering of concepts that had for a long time been prompted and legitimised by “history” was questioned together with the methodology and the values connected with it.

The exploration of the challenge of historicity as an element in an asymmetrical flow between Asia and Europe requires a transcultural history of historiography, the methodology of which explodes the traditional borders of historiographical research. Therefore, in this project, historiography will no longer be focused merely on national entities and the written sources privileged so far. Transcultural flows and their asymmetrical aspects in the construction of the past will be explored in a manner open for the hybrid and “in-between” (Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boye, Beyond Dichotomies, 2002), as well as the rich debates on subaltern histories (Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony, 1996). Who, as a consequence of this asymmetrical reconfiguration, is given or denied a significant past, and what is overstressed or untold? In this context historical narratives such as salvation or hagiographic as well as revolutionary  chronicles are not treated as outmoded forms of a not yet secularised historiography, but studied in their own context, impact, and transcultural connections. Special attention will be given to the interdisciplinary study of concepts of heritage memory and the political significance of “Geschichtspolitik”. Heritage is understood here in the definition proposed by UNESCO to include both tangible and intangible heritage and will include visual and aural sources, as well as different forms of culture beyond elite circles. Special attention will be given to asymmetries in the historical development of cultural industries and the cultural economy.

This methodological approach will help to create a new historical mind map that instead of remaining tied to territoriality focuses on transcultural exchange, modes of travelling, migration, and bordercrossing. A critical analysis of the historicity of ordering principles will create the conditions for opening the way for the investigation of dynamic changes and transgressions of all kinds.