Due to the impacts of postmodernism, social and cultural anthropology has been dealing intensively with the possibilities and limits of representing “other” human beings and their meaningful worlds. So far, the discipline has discussed ways of improving its methods of representation without, however, fully raising questions about the quality and validity of the objects represented and the very idea, that they could be “represented”. Thus, despite attempts to purify classical anthropological categories, substantialized identities (“Humans”, “Others”, “Pygmies” etc.) along with various forms of binary oppositions (us – them, culture – nature, human – animal, fact – representation) have been rehearsed. The project aims to dissect and challenge the metaphysical outputs of the “anthropological machine” (Giorgio Agamben).
Archiv des Tags «Humanities»
How should the humanities be positioned in the face of general and higher education policies’ transformation processes? This question will be the point of departure of the three-day conference «Für eine neue Kultur der Geisteswissenschaften?» organized by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW) in cooperation with the University of Basel’s «Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung».
In an article, recently posted on the Politblog, Politik der Schweiz, the former ETH professor and member of the National Council of Switzerland, Jacques Neirynck, has criticized politicians’ perspectives on the humanities. From a profit-oriented perspective, he argues, the humanities are often considered useless, as opposed to technical or medical sciences. In his article, he offers a contrasting view, considering the humanities “the breeding ground for politics”. Read the entire article (in German only).
