The Self and the Others: Identity, Gender and Ethnicity in German Culture around 1800

1

• The Self and the Others Identity, Gender and
  Ethnicity in German Culture around 1800

2
GE432 The Relevance of the Module

• Why identity?
• We live in a world which does not understand
  identity as fixed and given. We can define
  ourselves as individual psychological or physical
  units, in terms of regionality or nationality,
  language or ethnicity, gender or sexuality.
• Yet we may find these categories compete for our
  loyalty. They may be inadequate for us we may
  find ourselves on borders between them. We may
  see ourselves as hybrid forms of different
  identities or wish to dispense with them
  entirely.
• Why gender?
• Gender continues to be of relevance. It could be
  said literally to divide humanity in half. Is
  it culturally or physically determined or both?
  What are the advantages and disadvantages of
  subscribing to a notion of what it means to be
  male or female, masculine or feminine?
• Why ethnicity?
• Despite the demise of the anthropological term
  race and the decline of racially hierarchical
  political systems (Apartheid) terms such as
  multiculturalism, societies choose still to
  divide and subdivide along lines of perceived
  difference difference in skin colour, language
  and dialect, perceived origin and regional
  belonging. Where did this tradition come from?
  Can it and should it be challenged?

3
2. Why Self and Others ?

• Power representation - hierarchy
• In seeking to define ones self or ones own
  kind, individuals and groups have often used
  the strategy of defining what they are not.
• This other or alterity is often a
  stereotypical, one-dimensional image which might
  either demonise or fetishize/ exoticize that
  other in terms of a narrow set of perceived
  differences.
• The image of other (and consequently of self) is
  usually reductive and constitutes the self
  using its power to define and represent the other
  as other.
• This is an act of power, one which often takes
  the self to be superior or to exist some kind of
  norm and excludes the other the possibility of
  contributing by self-representation i.e. early
  colonial writing
• The course uses these terms not because they are
  absolute, or even valid in any sense. It views
  them as cultural constructions and wishes to
  examine how these came into being and how we can
  engage with them today.

4
3. Aims and Methods

• The module will equip us with theories for
  dealing with identity, gender and ethnicity in
  German culture around 1800.
• Despite this theoretical framework, the main
  emphasis in the module will be historical we
  shall examine texts in the context of the
  intellectual, social and aesthetic forces that
  shaped them we will make forays into theory to
  help us criticise and/ or appreciate what
  different texts achieve.
• The module will begin in the late Enlightenment
  (mid 1700s), a point in which German culture was
  attempting to define the self (and itself) and
  its others. In many ways this is the period in
  which gender and ethnicity first formally took on
  the starkly dualistic characteristics which they
  are slowly starting to lose today (masculine vs.
  feminine, white vs. black).
• The module will remain sensitive to how
  Enlightened, Romantic and later
  nineteenth-century writers (1830s-40s) produced
  texts that both promoted his dualistic view but
  also challenged it fundamentally. The period is
  an abundant source of contrasting possibilities
  and the literary texts chosen provide rich
  intersections of all of the ideas that interest
  us here.

5
4. Identity History and Theory

• How was identity being constructed in thought and
  writing around 1800?
• The nature of the individual subject, its
  ability to access the truth about itself and
  the world around it using reason, imagination,
  instinct, will power and language. (Kant, Fichte,
  the Romantics)
• In Romanticism increasing sense of the
  individuals failure to access absolute truths
  the relative value of truth and identity in flux.
  Identity thought of as representation Positive
  and negative aspects of this.
• What do contemporary theorists have to say?
• Stuart Hall, Introduction in Representation.
  Cultural Representations and Signifying Practises
  (Sage, 1997).
• Meaning is constructed thought, feeling and
  language, which are all signifying or
  representational practises. This involves
  attaching value and interpretation to things.
• Hall writes Meaning is what gives us our sense
  of identity, of who we are and with whom we
  belong so it is tied up with questions of how
  culture is used to mark out and maintain identity
  within and difference between groups ... (p.3)
  

6
5. Ethnic Otherness

• Contemporary theory
• Edward Saids project in Orientalism (1977). Said
  saw that underlying the construction of European
  identities in the 19th century lay a practise of
  exerting representational power over that which
  was non-white, non-European and non-Christian.
  Thus, he argues, the West lumped together the
  North African, Arabic, Persian, Indic and
  Oriental worlds, together with the Islamic
  religion and called it Oriental exoticizing
  and demonizing.
• To the Westerner ... the Oriental was always
  like some aspect of the West .... Yet the
  Orientalist makes it his work to be always
  converting the Orient from something into
  something else he does this for himself, for the
  sake of his culture, in some cases for what he
  believes is the sake of the Oriental. This
  process of conversion is a disciplined one it is
  taught, it has its own societies, periodicals,
  traditions, vocabulary, rhetoric, all in basic
  ways connected to and supplied by the cultural
  and political norms of the West (pp.67-68).
• Stuart Halls chapter The Spectacle of the
  Other (less one-sided?) difference is
  important function of culture because it
  regulates meaning, regulates the identity of the
  self and the world of objects it is a
  fundamental to the subjects understanding of its
  self (via an other).
• But we must still question the value of
  difference it can and often has involved
  reductive stereotyping. It is hard to write about
  difference without value judgement of some form
• ...difference is ambivalent. It can be both
  positive and negative (p.238).
• .

7
6. Ethnic Otherness contd.

• Historical tendencies around 1800
• The emphasis of the otherness of non-white
  groupings, rooted in perceived physical
  difference skin colour.
• Pseudo-scientific discourse of racializing
  anthropology Claudia Honegger, Die Ordnung der
  Geschlechter and the unknown continent.
• Networks of alterity the femininity of the
  ethnic other Passivity, irrationality and
  emotionality, body proximity.
• Is this true of all our writers, partly, wholly,
  not at all?

8
6. Historical and Theoretical Gender

• Gender around 1800
• Enlightenment and the polarisation of gender
  dualistic models.
• The Rousseauesque tradition of gender, the impact
  on politics and science. The impact on culture in
  Germany.
• Romantic attempts to modify gender? Women
  writers, radicals and intellectuals? Passive,
  receptive emotionally attuned men? Dialogue?
• The long nineteenth century missed
  opportunities?
• Contemporary Gender Studies
• Post war feminist criticism deconstructivism vs.
  essentialism
• Sivlia Bovenschen, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit
  Complementarity and reductivity also the
  monstrous?
• Emergence of Mens Studies late 1980s
  onwards.
• Does gender theory give enough credit to what
  writers around 1800 had to say on the subject of
  gender? Or do we need a good dose of theory?

9
7. A Summary

• Identity, gender, ethnicity are not fixed they
  are constructed in language and representational
  systems
• These systems use difference to define
  individuals and groups, which can lead to
  hierarchies, stereotyping and exclusion
• The culture produced 1770-1830 in Germany is rich
  in culture that allows us to explore these
  phenomena
• Some writers and artists were able to create
  flexible, evolving models of identity, gender,
  ethnicity, though others lapsed into dualisms of
  self and other.
• We shall be examining texts for evidence of all
  these tendencies

10
8. Preparing for Lessing (week 2)

• Reading Lessings
• Nathan der Weise (1779).
• What can you find out about G.E Lessing,
  particularly his religious and intellectual
  background?
• What different groups (religious/ ethnic/ gender)
  are drawn in the play?
• Are any tainted by ethno-religious stereotyping?
• Do these groups remain established or are they
  undermined if so, how, why and with what
  outcome?
• What is the Ringparabel about and what is its
  function?
• Are any of the groups shown to be less flexible
  and open-minded than others?

11
9. The Module Subsequent Weeks

• Two hour seminar each week. One hour, lecture
  with interactive elements the other hour
  textual discussion/ informal presentations.
• Extra reading (primary and secondary) may be
  given out at the end of each session for the
  following week. Attendance.
• Week by week breakdown see handout.