Life knowledge

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The term life knowledge unfolds the relationship between life and knowledge. It was re-shaped by the Potsdam Romanist Ottmar Ette and deals with basic questions of literature and life knowledge, as well as literary studies and life sciences in the context of basic philological research.

Literature and knowledge of life

The innovative potential of the term lies in the fact that the question horizon of life knowledge is primarily philological, cultural-theoretical and philosophical. For the traditional “two cultures” debate ( CP Snow ) between the humanities and the natural sciences, this means that the life sciences are in a complementary and at the same time contrasting relationship with the currently prevailing definition of the life sciences as life sciences . Literature has the ability not only to simulate normative forms of life practice, but also to make them available performatively, insofar as literature always contains knowledge about the limits of the validity of knowledge in a given culture or society. For a literary study oriented towards the life sciences, which opposes an unreflective fading out of the concept of life, the experimental character of literature is therefore geared not least to the fundamentally complex process nature of life.

Literary studies as a life science

The discussion was opened with Ette's book “Literary Studies as Life Science”. Knowledge of life is understood here as a concept of the horizon that increasingly moves the knowledge of life processes observable in the production and reception of art and literature into the focus of literary and cultural studies analyzes. The program publication triggered a discussion that went far beyond the humanities and cultural studies. Its publication in 2007 was followed by three dossiers in Lendemain's booklets (vol. 32: H. 126–127 & 128 and vol. 33: H. 129). In 2010 the debate was published in book form, with additional statements being printed in addition to the previously published essays with two texts by the two authors Amin Maalouf and Jorge Semprún . In addition to the establishment of the DFG graduate program "Lebensformen + Lebenswissen" at the University of Potsdam and the European University Viadrina an der Oder, the lecture series of the Mainz University Talks on the topic of "Life Knowledge: Dealing with Science" in 2007 followed numerous events, reviews ( among others in Die Zeit). Of these, the following are particularly worth mentioning:

  • “Vivre ensemble - living together. Le savoir sur le vivre de la littérature et de la critique littéraire. "(Maison Heinrich Heine, Paris May 27, 2010)
  • “LifeLive” in the L'Arc conference center of the Migros Cultural Foundation in Romainmôtier, 11. – 13. June 2010
  • "Forms of knowledge and norms of knowledge of coexistence". Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies FRIAS, 17.-18. July 2010
  • “Community in Literature” at the University of Osnabrück 29. – 30. October 2010

Various publications and translations have internationalized the discussion about the concept of life knowledge since 2009. On Ottmar Ette's monograph Del macrocosmos al microrrelato. Literatura y creación - nuevas perspectivas transareales (Guatemala: F&G Editores), which embeds the concept of life knowledge in a conception of transareal philology, followed in 2010 by the book Canon City by the Basque-Venezuelan philosopher and literary scholar Josu Landa (México: Afinita Editorial). In the same year the dossier "Vivre ensemble - Living together. Le" savoir sur la vie "de la litterature et la tâche de la critique littéraire was published in French." in the RZLG - Romance Journal for Literary History as well as an English version of the program publication in the journal PMLA, with a foreword by Vera M. Kutzinski , which particularly emphasizes and explains in detail the science-political dimension in Ette's conception.

Historical review

With his conception, Ottmar Ette refers to a tradition of the concept of life, which has important pillars in Hannah Arendt (especially Vita activa or Vom aktivigen Leben, 1960) and Giorgio Agamben (Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, 1995). The originality of Ette's concept formation lies in the connection between the concept of life and the concept of knowledge. This connection can look back on a science-historical dimension: it was already formulated - even if only in the context of a one-time publication - on February 12, 1801 by Christoph Meiners in his outline of ethics, or life science. For Meiners, life science is a knowledge of the good life for the individual as well as for different communities. From a comparative perspective, it critically examines knowledge of life forms and ways of life. However, he lacks a global perspective, which - in view of the times, not surprisingly - leads to a Eurocentric attitude that forces an affinity to the concept of civilization. With the exception of this individual work by Meiners, the terms life knowledge and life science can not look back on any conceptual development over the last two centuries up to the work of Ottmar Ette in 2007. Nevertheless, it is indisputable (and not least in view of the work of Michel Foucault ) that the concept of life became a central question between the differentiating areas of knowledge of philosophy and physiology, of anthropological ethics and medical and scientific research at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries has been.

Knowledge of life as a task of philology

The concept of knowledge of life propagates a rehabilitation of the concept of life for the humanities. Because if an interdisciplinary networked and strongly application-oriented ensemble of biochemical, biophysical, biotechnological and human medicine research fields claim the concept of life for themselves, then - according to Ette - the originally broad cultural diversification of life in the sense of gr. Bios is lost. With this, the Potsdam Romanist emphasizes a concept of knowledge of life understood as the "task of philology", which is seen as a contribution to a broad understanding of the life sciences and which draws on approaches from post-structuralist semiology, philosophical anthropology and a biopolitical cultural theory.

literature

  • Ottmar Ette: About life knowledge. The task of philology. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2004
  • Ottmar Ette: Writing Between Worlds . Literatures without permanent residence. Series ÜberLebenswissen, 2nd Kadmos, Berlin 2005
  • Ottmar Ette: Life Knowledge and Life Science. in Ansgar Nünning, Hg .: Metzler Lexikon literary and cultural theory. 4th edition. Stuttgart 2008, p. 414f.
  • Ottmar Ette: About literary studies as a life science. Perspectives of a Lifting Debate. In: Wolfgang Asholt and Ette, eds .: Literary studies as life science. Program, projects, perspectives. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2010, pp. 137 - 144. Online (PDF file; 519 kB)
  • Ottmar Ette: Knowledge of Life Together. List, burden and lust of literary conviviality on a global scale. Survival Knowledge Series, 3rd Kadmos, Berlin 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Literary Studies as a Life Science. A program publication in the year of the humanities, in "Lendemains. Études comparées sur la France. Zs. For comparative research on France," H. 125, vol. 32. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2007 ISSN  0170-3803 pp. 7–32.
  2. ↑ Asholt, Wolfgang / Ette, Ottmar (ed.): Literary studies as life science. Program - projects - perspectives. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, (series edition lendemains 20) Tübingen 2010. Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-potsdam.de
  3. ↑ Thomas Assheuer: “Who explains people? Two cultures: literary scholars mobilize against the life sciences in an anthology. " In: Die Zeit , No. 25, June 17, 2010. [1]
  4. ↑ Asholt, Wolfgang / Ette, Ottmar (eds.): Dossier: "Vivre ensemble - Living together. Le" savoir sur la vie "de la littérature et la tâche de la critique littéraire." In: Romance Journal for the History of Literature / Cahiers d'Histoire des Littératures Romanes (Heidelberg) XXXIV, 3 - 4 (2010), pp. 443-507.
  5. ^ Ottmar Ette: "Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living." Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Vera M. Kutzinski. In: Special Topic: "Literary Criticism for the Twenty-First Century", in: PMLA (New York) CXXV, 4 (October 2010), pp. 977-993. [2]