GRP 2012

Foreignness and interculturality.
Georg Forster as an intercultural author.

Georg Forster Colloquium 2012, University of Kassel, June 15-16, 2012

Transnational and intercultural topics are at the center of public interest and in recent years have become an established and particularly intensively studied field of teaching and research in linguistics, literature and cultural studies. Our colloquium is intended to raise the profile of this field of work. However, the state of the discussion means that it is now less a matter of, as the editors of the newly founded Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik write, "defending the research paradigm of interculturality against its critics, and more a matter of protecting the term from its enthusiasts." With regard to the paradigm of interculturality, Georg Forster has an exceptional and still largely underestimated role to play. More than almost any other of his contemporaries, he overcame the narrowness of political and social living conditions early on by traveling widely. These experiences are articulated in his texts in different modes of experiencing and processing foreignness: foreignness is processed and reflected upon, overwritten and transformed. Furthermore, even before the development of national academic traditions, Forster established an intercultural literary and academic practice based on diverse studies, translation and mediation work, which projects a dialog with other cultures that integrates European and non-European perspectives. This field is to be explored in relation to Georg Forster and the late Enlightenment as well as to overarching contexts in the history of science. The project to provide building blocks for an interculturally oriented literary history could form a point of convergence for the desired contributions.