Transcultural Studies

In this article, I focus on a set of collectively stitched handkerchiefs commemorating victims of Mexico’s “war on drugs.” I propose that these embroideries completed in relays can be conceived as the tangible manifestation of work done by collaboration networks articulated by the response of the participants to the call for a critical exercise of citizenship. I posit that the word “citizenship” can be read either as domestic citizenry, that is, as exhorting Mexican nationals to commit to the political struggle against violence and impunity; or as global citizenship, that is, as promoting a responsibility towards and a sense of interconnectedness with a common humanity. In both cases, the call for a critical exercise of citizenship expresses a concern to promote and act in accordance with an ethics of nonviolence, informed by the principles of indigenous communal polities and by the longstanding connection between embroidery and feminine moral virtue imported into New Spain during t...

https://www.press.ntu.edu.tw/index.php?act=book&refer=ntup_book00969

莊子的思想不僅在古代已經很當代，在當代也依然很當代。為什麼當今的莊子研究展現出罕見的跨文化潛力？為什麼莊子可以成為當代歐洲哲學與當代漢語哲學之間的一條通道？為什麼跨文化莊子研究深受法語莊子研究的啟發，但卻必須有賴臺灣的特殊文化歷史處境才得以逐漸發揮出乎預料的當代性？為什麼《莊子》與當代民主政治所面臨的問題能產生難以言喻的呼應關係？為什麼《莊子》有助於進入跨文化的互相學習、互相批判、互相轉化的動態過程？究竟，為什麼是《莊子》？這些是此本論文集從不同角度所思考的問題。至於為什麼莊子會在眾多中土哲人中脫穎而出，讀者只要稍加翻閱本書所收文章，即不難發現其中的線索：莊子提供了一種新的主體範式。

This paper deals with the historiographic reflections on the civilizations of Southeast Asia, written by some Italian scholars who explored this area in the second half of the Nineteenth century. These texts were translations of summaries, unpublished notes intended for reworking, introduction to ethnographic studies. Their publication testifies to the trans-cultural circulation of historical and political information between Indochina and Italy, caused by political initiatives (the opening of diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma) and by expeditions financed by some scientific institutions, such as the Genoa Natural History Museum.

Audiences are among the dominant elements of courtly life and may be referred to as a central aspect of representation of power in many societies. Audiences also served as a stage for negotiation and political decision-making. Beyond that, the ceremonial of audience acted as an integrative factor, strengthening the connections between the ruler and his subjects, the élite and his dynastic background. It thus reflects the structure, or at least the intended structure of rule, and allows us to get insight into the perception of the ruler in the respective society. This volume offers an approach to forms and structures of audiences in different epochs and regions. Choosing a transcultural and diachronic perspective, it aims at delineating similarities and differences as well as possible lines of development of the ceremonial on a broad basis of case studies.

This paper deals with the historiographic reflections on the civilizations of Southeast Asia, written by some Italian scholars who explored this area in the second half of the Nineteenth century. These texts were translations of summaries, unpublished notes intended for reworking, introduction to ethnographic studies. Their publication testifies to the trans-cultural circulation of historical and political information between Indochina and Italy, caused by political initiatives (the opening of diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma) and by expeditions financed by some scientific institutions, such as the Genoa Natural History Museum.

This paper was specially written for the International Congress ‘Juri Lotman's Semiosphere’  / Lotman@100 
https://jurilotman.ee/en/
https://jurilotman.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Abstracts_Congress_Juri_Lotmans_Semiosphere.pdf
https://jurilotman.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/21.02-Congress-program-Programme-II.pdf
CONGRESS 2022 “JURI LOTMAN’S SEMIOSPHERE”
February 25–28 at Tallinn University and the University of Tartu, Estonia
I remain deeply grateful  for their generous support to Desiderio’s daughter Joyce Navarro and his widow Tatiana Gorstko. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić; to Maria-Kristiina Lotman, to Tatjana Kuzovkina and Darja Dorving, All of them have invested time and intellectual insights, they have given significant impulses for my study, on this special occasion, celebrating Juri Lotman's work in the centenary of his birth in 2022.

Das Seminar zur Ästhetik im Laozi werde ich zusammen mit Prof. Dr. Fabian Heubel (Research Fellow am Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica in Taipei) veranstalten. Das klassische daoistische Buch Laozi (Laotse), auch Daodejing (Tao Te King) genannt, ist einer der Grundtexte chinesischer Philosophie. Seine Bedeutung wird durch die Vielzahl von Übersetzungen in westliche Sprachen unterstrichen. In diesem Seminar werden ausgewählte Kapitel des Buches gemeinsam gelesen und auf ihre ästhetische Bedeutung hin befragt. Motive wie „Weg“ (dao), „Ohne-Tun“ (wuwei), „Fadheit“ (dan) und „Weichheit/Härte“ werden dabei im Mittelpunkt stehen.

Bei der Textlektüre werden drei Aspekte besonders berücksichtigt: 1. Der Vergleich verschiedener Übersetzungen, um verschiedene Interpretationsmöglichkeiten zu erkunden; 2. Lektüre ausgewählter chinesischer Kommentare in Übersetzung, die einen Eindruck davon vermitteln können, wie der Text in China gelesen und gedeutet worden ist; 3. transkulturelle Korrespondenzen, in denen es um Möglichkeiten geht, den Text im Horizont der Gegenwartsphilosophie neu zu lesen.

Kenntnisse der chinesischen Sprache werden nicht vorausgesetzt.

Generally speaking, a minority language is “one spoken by less than 50 percent of a population in a given region, state or country” (Grenoble and Singerman, 2017, n.p.). In this article, I propose a more contextualized definition that applies to the realm of literary writing and (self-)translation. Thus, I define a minority language as any language which a bilingual or plurilingual writer perceives as not being the dominant one in the sociocultural and linguistic context in which s/he is active as an author or as a (self-)translator. Assuming this alternative definition as a point of departure, I discuss the creative and self-translational practice of the Canadian writer Antonio D’Alfonso. D’Alfonso is one of those rare plurilingual writers who feel linguistically defamiliarized, claiming that instead of having a proper mother tongue he has a mixed baggage of native Molisano dialect, French, English and Italian. Thus, he tends to write, think and (self-)translate immersed in a kind of 3D- (or even 4D-) linguistic landscape (Pivato, 2002). D’Alfonso’s self-translations from French into English and/or vice versa are testimony to the author’s experimental way of challenging the “crude subjugation” (Whyte, 2002, p. 69) of a language over another and of overcoming any minority-language complex he might have developed on his path to becoming a linguistically uprooted writer.

𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙣 is a magazine curated by Vera Heimisch. 
This issue wonders about alternative forms of accesing knowledge in order to resereach about Transcultura Studies, Decolonial and Embodied Art Practices.

Includes researches of: #AzadehSharif #VeraHeimisch #BelindaKazeemKaminski
#NashilongweshipweMushaandja

Languages: German, English, Spanish.

In-text: (Sharif, Heimisch, KazeemKaminski, Mushaandja & Montoya, 2020)

Your Bibliography: Sharif, A., Heimisch, V., KazeemKaminski, B., Mushaandja, N., & Montoya, V. (2020). To Walk. Interventionen, (1), 65-77.

Ce texte vise à montrer la problématique des opérations politiques de la mobilité à l'intérieur du système international de l'art contemporain, soit à l'intérieur des réseaux économique, symbolique et transculturel proposés par les biennales internationales, la communauté translocale de galeries, la nouvelle géographie des institutions culturelles, les musées, las organisations et les cadres ainsi que les processus d'internationalisation de l'art contemporain des années quatre-vingt.

The article offers a case study in the nature of uses of the European past in East Asia at a time when the search for the knowledge of the West was not yet motivated primarily by any sense of its civilizational, moral, or technological superiority. In the course of the later eighteenth century, as Dutch philological expertise gradually became another available tool – alongside the long-established Sinological erudition – for generating knowledge about the world, commentators around the Japanese archipelago began to turn not only to the medical and astronomical manuals of the occidentals but also to their histories. The translation-cum-commentary Miscellanea from the western seas by Yamamura Saisuke (1801) is a case in point. The text became effectively a crossroads of two philological and historiographical bodies of knowledge that intersected in unexpected ways as the European past was subjected to a reinterpretation in terms of the classical Chinese precedent, while the product of that reinterpretation informed a different understanding of the recent and contemporary historical trajectory of a Japan now exposed to the dynamics of the global European presence.

The author’s composition for string quartet, “…from thatched hut” (2011) was written in response to an exhibition of furniture designed by Khai Liew, and was premiered in the exhibition space. The designer’s Chinese heritage and the nature of his work, which fuses modern Western design principles with techniques and aesthetics of Ming dynasty furniture, influenced the form and content of the music. The author’s own long engagement with Chinese culture led to the composition of a seven-movement work that fused techniques of contemporary Western music and Chinese traditional music. The work also drew inspiration from Chinese philosophy and poetry, in particular the work of Li Bai and Du Fu. There are many Chinese composers who have assimilated Western techniques – it is standard practice in China, where students are taught Western composition. However, examples of Western composers drawing on Chinese musical elements are rare in comparison, while other Asian musical traditions – from Indonesia, Japan and India – have exerted widespread influence in the West. In this paper the author examines the challenges of a transcultural approach to composition, and considers questions of influence and authenticity.

En una cultura visual marcadamente colonialista y excluyente, la entrada del arte contemporáneo periférico en los circuitos canónicos nos arroja las siguientes preguntas sobre la mesa: ¿qué motivó que este arte 'otro' entrara en los circuitos de exposición occidentales? ¿por medio de qué vías  se ha vuelto accesible dicha forma de alteridad sensible? ¿la búsqueda de un verdadero equilibrio en la cartografía internacional del arte contemporáneo encuentra su correspondencia en el equilibrio de las políticas de representación de la diversidad cultural, o la integración de la periferia, paradójicamente, ha servido más bien para perpetuar y fortalecer el poder del centro? ¿qué queda del Otro, y en dónde, cuando es representado? ¿la incorporación de la periferia cultural (de los extremos de Occidente) al mainstream, es parte del proyecto de estetización de lo subordinado? ¿la inclusión de los Otros debe ser vista como una victoria del proyecto poscolonial, como la expresión cultural más eficaz de la descolonización, o bien como una nueva forma de domino intercultural mediada por el control de los mecanismos de exhibición de las identidades y por la gestión de las políticas de representación de la diversidad cultural? ¿en qué medida puede la estética implicarse en este juego de tensiones para mediar el desequilibrio entre las diferentes culturas? ¿será capaz la teoría estética (a través de una nueva delimitación geoepistemológica de sus fronteras) de utilizar la escenificación global de la pluralidad del arte contemporáneo como un verdadero motor epistemológico que disminuya la estandarización de las identidades y la absorción de las diferencias culturales? ¿tienen las prácticas artísticas y la visualidad crítica un papel ineludible en el proceso de consecución de una verdadera condición poscolonial de la cultura global?

En este libro se aborda el contexto de una situación cultural que describiremos como la condición poscolonial del proceso de internacionalización del arte contemporáneo, en la cual el campo de acción de la estética parece requerir unas nuevas delimitaciones y unas nuevas fronteras epistemológicas que desdibujen la separación que se instaló, impelida por una lectura posmodernista de la modernidad colonial, entre los sujetos, sus subjetividades y los procesos de estetización, apropiación y politización de la realidad.

Worin besteht eine visuelle Kultur der Migration? Ömer Alkin liefert hierfür die erste
umfassende Geschichte und Analyse des ›deutsch-türkischen Kinos‹. Mit seinem Konzept der »Polyzentrierung« macht er die populären Yeşilçam-Filme aus der Türkei in der Historie des Genres sichtbar und wendet sich so gegen eurozentrische und epistemologisch vereinseitigende Modelle. Die postkolonialtheoretisch informierte Auseinandersetzung mit der Historie mündet so in medientheoretische Reflexionen: Ästhetische und kulturtheoretische Analysen zeigen, als was Migration in den Filmkulturen überhaupt sichtbar wird. Dabei werden die populären Filme zu »denkenden Medien«, die zu grundlegenden Erkenntnissen für die Bestimmung einer visuellen Kultur der Migration führen.

Le récit des crimes du 7 janvier 2015 comme leur motif le plus évident - les caricatures du prophète Mahomet - ont fait le tour du monde, nourrissant des réactions et des interprétations multiples et divergentes malgré l’unanimisme des condamnations. Les lignes qui suivent se penchent sur la réception de cette tragédie en Chine. Ce texte ne s’aventure pas sur les causes multiples et complexes qui ont rendu possible ces drames sauf à préciser qu’une idéologie mortifère et totalitaire s’est épanouie sur une pluralité de facteurs et de temporalités indémêlables. Parmi les enjeux de dimension globale soulevés par ces évènements, il est possible d’identifier pêle-mêle les pratiques terroristes de l’islamisme radical, la place des minorités dans les états-nations contemporains, la question du blasphème visant des figures politiques ou religieuses, la liberté d’expression et ses limites. Dans la longue durée, ces évènements percutent aussi la condition postcoloniale du monde, et le legs d’une hégémonie non seulement géopolitique et économique mais aussi culturelle et épistémologique des sociétés occidentales. Si les sujets évoqués dans les lignes précédentes ont bien été mobilisés parmi les interprétations « chinoises » de ces attentats, la distance culturelle, politique et affective avec les évènements a parfois empêché les commentateurs chinois de saisir certains aspects du drame propres à un imaginaire national, un contexte idéologique et un langage politique spécifiquement français. La résonance globale de ces évènements ne saurait ainsi occulter que leur interprétation se déploya au sein d’un imaginaire institué déterminé par des enjeux politiques, idéologiques et linguistiques propres à la société chinoise. Parler d’une réception « chinoise » comporte le risque d’une simplification abusive et d’une essentialisation discutable d’un espace social, politique et culturel hétérogène. Un imaginaire dominant quelque peu paresseux qui réduit la « Chine » à son régime politique autoritaire empêche trop souvent de saisir les nuances, les variations et les dynamiques internes à la société chinoise. Des points de vue parfois divergents ont pu apparaitre dans les commentaires et les interprétations des évènements de janvier 2015, en fonction du statut des auteurs, des rubriques ou des titres de presse. Cette absence d’opinion unanime fut encore plus flagrante sur les réseaux sociaux pendant les quelques jours qui ont suivi les évènements. Plus tardivement, des articles de facture plus théoriques se sont confrontés au sujet dans des revues académiques et à partir de perspectives disciplinaires variées telles que la sociologie des media, les sciences de la communication, la philosophie, les études françaises. Des publications de think tanks rattachés au Parti ont aussi proposés des analyses visant à rappeler la doxa marxiste-léniniste sur la nature et le rôle de la presse dans les sociétés occidentales. Qu’il s’agisse de la presse, des textes académiques ou des interventions d’acteurs étatiques, la position dominante peut se synthétiser à grand traits de la façon suivante : une condamnation unanime et ferme du terrorisme associée à des marques appuyées de solidarité avec les victimes et, quasi-simultanément, l’apparition de critiques à l’endroit des journalistes de Charlie Hebdo en tant qu’ils incarnaient une position, un discours et des valeurs « occidentales » antagonistes avec le modèle défendu par l’Etat-Parti.
Ce sont les fondements idéologiques et politiques, mais aussi parfois épistémologiques et historiographiques, de cette critique, que cet essai se propose d’interroger, sachant que la fonction métonymique de « Charlie » en tant que symbole global de « valeurs occidentales » putatives ne s’est évidemment pas limitée pas au contexte chinois. Dans quelle mesure, et comment, ces évènements ont-ils trouvé une résonance discursive et des correspondances idéologiques dans l’espace politico-médiatique chinois ? Quelle fut la fonction de cette critique du journal satirique dans le contexte idéologique et politique chinois ? Bref, de quoi les caricatures de Charlie Hebdo ont-elles été le nom en Chine continentale ?

An international two-year Erasmus Mundus MA, Transcultural European Outdoor Studies (TEOS), uses the journey as a central metaphorical concept, the ‘peregrinatio academica’, and experiential pedagogy. Students study human nature interactions through the lens of outdoor education and recreation while travelling for a semester at a time in three European countries: England, Norway and Germany. We argue that the transcultural concept is facilitated by the diverse nationalities of the student cohort and the concept and experience of the journey. Empirical evidence from student feedback, course discussions, and staff reflections is used to explore the ways in which the programme elucidates ideas of expert and Eurocentric knowledge of landscape and learning by valuing individual knowledge constructions and new research. Simultaneously, we argue that the typical European ‘gaze’ on the ‘other’ somehow is reversed as ‘others’ gaze at European cultures, and, to some degree, contribute to destabilising culturally taken-for-granted knowledge. This offers new opportunities for a more nuanced transcultural exploration of human nature interactions in diverse landscapes and cultures. We conclude that the knowledge and skills developed by this programme supports the development of’ ‘transculturalised’ students with the enhanced capacity to shift between and discuss diverse positions and ways of viewing and knowing.

This comparative study examines the way Israeli Holocaust descendants and Cambodian genocide descendants differentially reconstitute " discontinued " descendant-ancestor relations with the genocide dead they never knew. Empirically examining the way distant bonds " discontinued " in contexts of warfare and mass suffering are restored in everyday life, this study fills a lacuna in the scholarship on genocide legacies, continuing bonds, and person-dead contact. Descendants depict channels of engagement with the dead entailing person-person-dead contact, person-object interaction, and imaginal conversations, constituting copresence and intersubjectivity. Contrary to trauma theory, Holocaust and genocide studies, and the anthropology of absence that reduce relations with the dead to maladaptive identification or the burdensome presence of voided absence, the data points to normalized and empowering relations. Comparative findings contribute to our understanding of the way cross-cultural meaning making differentially conceptualizes the porous border between the living and their ancestors and informs the restoration of (dis)-continued bonds. [continuing bonds, intergenerational transmission of trauma, genocide legacies, memory, death, intercultural variation] Although much has been written about the psychological legacy of trauma survivors and their descendants (Danieli 1998; Kidron 2012), we know little regarding descendants' lived experience of the presence of and relations with those long dead and the mechanisms through which these bonds are constituted and sustained. Recent studies have shown that survivor-descendant empathic interaction and person-object interaction with memento mori constitute the taken-for-granted material, embodied, and emotive copresence of the geno-cide past in the familial domain (Kidron 2009). We may ask whether within this context of the " living memory " (Halbwachs 1980) of genocide in the survivor home, descendants also empathically sense and engage with absent relatives. Do descendants give their absence form, content, and voice? Considering the absence of direct descendant relations with the distant dead and what the literature depicts as the absence of trauma descendant knowledge regarding the genocide and prewar past (Danieli 1998), how might these relations be con-stituted? How do descendants depict this engagement? In keeping with trauma theory, are relations experienced as a personal burden (Wardi 1990), as a psycho-socially distressing form of identification (Kestenberg 1992), or a meaningful and normalized experience of everyday life? Are these relations solely constituted by the deathworlds that ruptured the lives of their forbears? Alternatively, do inherited ancestor-descendant relations mark the

In an increasingly globalised and globalising world, „culture‟ appears as „an important determinant of subjectivity‟ and, consequently, of creative expression (Beautell 2000). With this in mind, Tötösy de Zepetnek (1999) prompted researchers to merge the comparative study of literature with that of cultural studies, embracing what he designated the new „comparative cultural studies‟ approach. If we are to accept Tötösy de Zepetnek‟s challenge, however, as I argue in this paper, it would be better to adopt a transcultural theoretical paradigm more apt to deal with the cultural complexities of the twenty-first century mobile age. Not only does „transculture/ality‟ – the combined notion of „transculture‟ (Epstein 1995, 2009) and „transculturality‟ (Welsch 1999, 2009) – appear to be endowed with the kind of dynamic non-linear nature and flexibility most needed in dealing with the fast- changing patterns and transformations in cultures and literatures, but it also seems to promote a new „borderless‟ comparative methodology. In doing so it marks an attempt to move away from nationalist stances and the insistence on the periphery–centre, colony– empire, ethnic–mainstream, pure–hybrid dichotomies with which comparative studies (especially within a postcolonial perspective) have been so far associated. It also offers the possibility of overcoming the nihilistic, self-defeating nature of anything „post-‟ to embrace instead the „visionary power‟ (Braidotti 2006), vitalist possibilities and new beginnings inherent in an approach that accepts the prefix proto- (starting from „protoglobal‟: Epstein 2004) when dealing with our contemporaneity.

Er(r)go…,
Kanada. Ale Kanada już nie jako mit dalekiego Edenu – ,,kraina żywicą pachnąca" – lecz jako laboratorium wielokulturowości, politycznie usankcjonowany eksperyment wzajemnego wszczepiania tkanki Innego i Tożsamego; a zatem Kanada – czy raczej TransKanada – jako kontrowersja: nie wokół banalnego politycznie problemu dwukulturowości (angielska Kanada jako Brytania Północy, a Quebec jako Nowa Francja), ale istotnego dla cywilizacji nie tylko zachodniej zjawiska współistnienia wielości kultur. Kanada jako ogromna przestrzeń: fizyczna – niezmierzone lasy, Góry Skaliste, jeziora – ale też jako przestrzeń kulturowych transakcji i translacji, przestrzeń międzykulturowego spotkania. Nigdzie chyba problematyka tożsamości kulturowej nie została tak silnie wyeksponowana i nie wywołała tak twórczej debaty wokół postkolonializmu, hybrydyczności, wielonarodowości, transkulturowości – nigdzie też nie była ta debata tak silnie zakorzeniona w praktyce codziennego, międzykulturowego współbycia. Przesunięcie do centrum grup uprzednio marginalizowanych, Pierwsze Narody, transkulturowość i obywatelstwo diasporyczne, pojęcia narodowości i państwowości, ale też postnarodowość i postpaństwowość,transnarodowość i transkulturowość, dekonstrukcja tradycyjnych narodowych ideologii i autokonstrukcja społeczności, dialog z Innymi i pomiędzy Innymi, postetniczność i tożsamość ludności rodzimej. Jednocześnie obawa i wyczulenie na zagrożenia: ,,kontroli epistemologicznej" przez kulturę dominującą czy politycznego zarządzania różnic, które nie zostawia przestrzeni dla dialogu kultur; ostrożność wobec pozornie neutralnych i nienaznaczonych innością/etnicznością kultur i literatur wywodzących się z kręgu anglo-europejskiego, ale ,,z natury" niejako nadal zajmujących pozycję uprzywilejowaną jako epistemologiczny punkt odniesienia. Pytania kanadyjskie to pytania najżywotniejsze dla współczesnego tygla cywilizacji. Czy klonować zatem kanadyjski klon, czy raczej pozostać przy syropie?

Klonowanie Kanady to numer „Er(r)go” gościnnie przygotowany przez Eugenię Sojkę, znakomitą propagatorkę kultury kanadyjskiej i problematyki wielokulturowości.

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go…,
Canada. But not any longer as the embodied myth of the far-off Eden—"the land of plenty"—now a multicultural laboratory, a politically sanctioned experiment of mutual grafting of the tissues of the Self and the Other. Thus, Canada—or perhaps TransCanada—as a controversy: not of the politically banal duality of culture (English Canada as the Britannia of the North and Quebec as the New France), but of the phenomenon that remains significant not only for the western civilization—the coexistence of multiplicity of cultures. Canada as an immense physical space—unfathomable forests, The Rocky Mountains, lakes—but also as a space of cultural translations and transactions, a space of cross-cultural meeting. Probably nowhere else has the issue of cultural identity been made so apparent and evoked such creative debates over postcolonialism, hybridity, multinationalism, transculturalism—nowhere else have those debates been so strongly rooted in the practice of everyday, cross-cultural coexistence. The centralization of the groups hitherto marginalized, the First Nations, transculturalism and diasporic citizenship, the concepts of citizenship and nationality, but also post-citizenship and post-nationality, transcitizenship and transculturalism, deconstruction of traditional national ideologies and self-construction of the society, the dialogue with the Other and amongst Others, post-ethnicity and the identity of the indigenous peoples. At the same time, apprehension and watchfulness for the threat of "epistemological control" by a dominant culture or political management of differences which leaves no space for cultural dialogue; wariness for the seemingly neutral cultures, unmarked by otherness/ethnicity and literatures of the Anglo-European origin, which nevertheless still appear to hold a position privileged as the epistemological point of reference. The Canadian questions are questions of utmost significance for the contemporary melting pot of civilizations. Should we then believe in the growth of the maple leaf or just stick to the maple syrup?

Map(l)ing Canada is an issue of Er(r)go guest edited by Eugenia Sojka, a distinguished spokesperson for Canadian culture and the theme of multiculturalism.

Wojciech Kalaga

Ausgehend von Interpretationen zu literarischen Texten des 21. Jahrhunderts, in deren Zentrum Ost-westliche Transfers stehen, macht die Monographie auf einen blinden Fleck der zeitgenössischen Debatte um das kulturelle Gedächtnis aufmerksam. Sie stellt diesem Begriff den des Interkulturellen Gedächtnisses als Ergänzung an die Seite, um terminologisch pointiert zu fassen, was das Anliegen der untersuchten Texte ist. Es geht ihnen um marginalisierte Erinnerungen von Migranten und Migrantinnen, Sexarbeiterinnen oder politisch Verfolgten und – mehr noch – um den semantischen Kampf, diese Marginalisierungen ansprechen zu können. Die Ursache der Unmöglichkeit des Sprechens über diese Erinnerungen, die teilweise so weitereichend ist, dass das Erinnern selbst nicht mehr oder nur noch rudimentär möglich ist, sehen die Texte im Fehlen von angemessenen Formen des Erinnerns. Dass ausgerechnet in der Kunstform Literatur die Möglichkeit gegeben ist, auf das Fehlen dieser Sprachformen hinzuweisen, liegt nicht zuletzt daran, dass es ihr möglich ist, neue Formen und Formulierungen zu (er)finden, indem Aporien oder Widersprüchlichkeiten als solche ausgestellt werden können. Die Texte tun dies – wo es gelingt – vor allem durch den Transfer und das Verweben verschiedener Gedächtniskulturen, die nicht immer international, aber doch immer interkulturell sind. Das Buch ist erschienen und erhältlich  bei Königshausen & Neumann (www.koenigshausen-neumann.de).

“Transcultural Identity and Migration: Zachary Karabashliev’s 18 % Gray.” (Pop) Cultures on the Move: Transnational Identifications and Cultural Exchange between East and West. (eds.) Astrid M. Fellner, Tetiana Ostapchuk, Bärbel Schlimbach. Saarbrücken:  Universitätsverlag | universaar, 2018. 67-87. ISBN 978-3-86223-229-1.

Longtemps marginalisé par la critique, Les Voix de Marrakech est assurément l’un des plus beaux livres d’Elias Canetti, l’un des plus accessibles et fascinants aussi. Né d’un voyage authentique entrepris en 1954, ce bref et dense récit offre un saisissant portrait de la ville marocaine, ainsi qu’une véritable introduction à l’univers et à la pensée du Prix Nobel de littérature. Dans la mesure où Canetti, cet auteur interculturel par excellence, a défini l’écrivain comme « gardien des métamorphoses », son livre sur Marrakech peut se lire comme un véritable tableau de métamorphoses interculturelles illustrant un sentiment à la fois de dépaysement et de proximité face à la ville marocaine et ses habitants.
Fruit d’un long travail de recherche, cette étude est la première à proposer une analyse intégrale de ce récit de voyage d’un genre particulier. En se référant au texte original aussi bien qu’à la traduction française, elle se destine à tout étudiant, enseignant ou chercheur souhaitant entreprendre une lecture approfondie de l’œuvre.

For centuries artists, diplomats, and merchants served as cultural intermediaries in the Mediterranean. Stationed in port cities and other entrepôts of the Mediterranean, these go-betweens forged intercultural connections even as they negotiated and sometimes promoted cultural misunderstandings. They also moved objects of all kinds across time and space. This volume considers how the mobility of art and material culture is intertwined with greater Mediterranean networks from 1580 to 1880. Contributors see the movement of people and objects as transformational, emphasizing the trajectory of objects over single points of origin, multiplicity over unity, and mutability over stasis.

Beginning first with a general overview of the term avant-garde, this paper next examines roughly Meiji politics as one of the core reasons behind the perception of the early Japanese avant-garde in the 1920s as a simple imitation of the European model. Radical avant-garde groups such as MAVO and Sanka will be introduced as main examples for the movement, which questioned the foundation of modern art and avant-garde in Japan. Their tools for achieving this goal in the form of tendencies toward transgressions can be located in the diversity of artistic styles and genres, in the blurring of the boundary between the so-called high and low art, and in the passing from the visible to the invisible. The resulting performative act—of demonstrating the new movement in the form of a manifesto as an artistic practice and the elimination of the boundaries between the artwork and the audience—is outstanding.

From "Japan and Asia: representations of selfness and otherness", edited by Marco Pellitteri, (Mutual Images, Vol. 4), 2018, 6–33.

Despite a stated commitment to cross-cultural solidarity, trauma theory—an area of cultural investigation that emerged out of the 'ethical turn' affecting the humanities in the 1990s—is marked by a Eurocentric, monocultural bias. This book takes issue with the tendency of the founding texts of the field to marginalize or ignore traumatic experiences of non-Western or minority groups, and to take for granted the universal validity of definitions of trauma and recovery that have developed out of the history of Western modernity. Moreover, it questions the assumption that a modernist aesthetic of fragmentation and aporia is uniquely suited to the task of bearing witness to trauma, and criticizes the neglect of the connections between metropolitan and non-Western or minority traumas. Combining theoretical argument with literary case studies, Postcolonial Witnessing contends that the suffering engendered by colonialism needs to be acknowledged more fully, on its own terms, in its own terms, and in relation to traumatic First World histories if trauma theory is to have any hope of redeeming its promise of cross-cultural ethical engagement.

Tracing a brief genealogy of landscape and its ethic and aesthetical aspects  I´ve tried to stabilish a dialogue between Ambient Music and the eletronic version of Bossa Nova (New Bossa Nova/Bossatrônica) as a transcultural perspective way of understanding pop music and art in general.

This handbook includes state-of-the-art research on love in classical, modern and postmodern perspectives. It expands on previous literature and explores topics around love from new cultural, intercultural and transcultural approaches and across disciplines. It provides insights into various love concepts, like romantic love, agape, and eros in their cultural embeddedness, and their changes and developments in specific cultural contexts. It also includes discussions on postmodern aspects with regard to love and love relationships, such as digitalisation, globalisation and the fourth industrial revolution. Th e handbook covers a vast range of topics in relation to love: aging, health, special needs, sexual preferences, spiritual practice, subcultures, family and other relationships, and so on. Th e chapters look at love not only in terms of the universal concept and in private, intimate relationships, but apply a broad concept of love which can also, for example, be referred to in postmodern workplaces. Th is volume is of interest to a wide readership, including researchers, practitioners and students of the social sciences, humanities and behavioural sciences. In the 1970s through the 90s, I was told that globalization was homogenizing cultures into a worldwide monoculture. Th is volume, as risky and profound as the many adventures of love across our multiplying cultures are, proves otherwise. Th e authors’ revolutionary and courageous work will challenge our sensibilities and expand the boundaries of what we understand what love is. But that’s what love does: It communicates what is; offers what can be; and pleads for what must be. I know you’ll enjoy this wonderful book as much as I do! Jeffrey Ady, Associate Professor (retired), Public Administration Program, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Founding Fellow, International Academy for Intercultural Research The International Handbook of Love is far more than a traditional compendium. It is a breath-taking attempt to synthesize our anthropological and sociological knowledge on love. It illuminates topics as diverse as Chinese love, one-night stands, teen romance or love of leaders and many more. Th is is a definitive reference in the field of love studies. Eva Illouz, author of Th e End of Love: A sociology of Negative relationships. Oxford University Press.

A memory box, or a keepsake box, is associated with romantic fiction and childhood culture. It has often been a wooden chest, made for storing mementos. As cultural artefacts memory boxes have their own long history; they can be interpreted as artefactual expressions of the self, as vehicles of memory as well as transmitters of material reminiscences of the past to the future.

Despite the fact that the history of keepsake boxes would be fascinating in its own right, this book is based on the metaphorical use of the term. The major motive for this book is the fact that a memory box offers ample possibilities for experimentation. As already the concrete use of the word refers to something (memory) being isolated from its surroundings (box) in order to make it portable, it seems possible to apply the idea of memory box in the analysis of cultural transfer. Since a memory box is a container of memories,
or includes material references to memory, it can be a means for cultural transfer not only between borders in a social and geographical sense but also for temporal shifts from the past to the present and from the present to the future. Cultural transfer is often viewed from the perspective of synchronic displacements, but the notion of a memory box would also set this synchronic movement into the context of diachronic transfer.