RICERCA ITALIANA     

European culture and the problem of otherness: historiography, politics, science of man in modern Europe (XVI-XIX centuries)

Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"

Abstract

The historical question at the centre of our research program is to study the importance of the relationship with cultural otherness in the building of modern European identity. The relationship with otherness took two directions: on the one hand, the confrontation with non-European civilisations; on the other hand, the confrontation with the manifold social, religious, political, ideological worlds within the European civilisation. Our research will study institutions, ideologies, political practices, biographies according to historical methodology. But the analysis will be interdisciplinary as well: in order to historically understand texts, social, cultural and political dynamics, it is useful to adopt anthropological and literary perspectives as well.
Thus our research should not only give new answers to acknowledged historical problems, but will highlight new questions. <<<

Principal Investigator

Girolamo IMBRUGLIA Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "L'Orientale"

Research Objectives

Cultural difference is an anthropological feature of the human species which has influenced its whole history. The confrontation with different cultures has brought forth tensions and conflicts which have been settled either by violence, or by new forms of freedom, in both the present and the past. Our research program aims at studying the confrontation between identity and otherness in modern Europe. We shall therefore analyse the institutions, ideologies, political and individual choices which have both directed this confrontation and permitted and defined what otherness was. The confrontation with otherness was not only one amongst civilizations; inside European civilization itself many complex worlds of manifold otherness got in contact - religious, ideological, political. Because of this reason it has seemed necessary to investigate religious or political structures, such as the empire, missions and other religious institutions; or social practices as voyages, or cultural contexts as the new philosophical and juridical European cultures: these are the structures within which it is possible to historically follow conflicts between identities and otherness. This perspective allows us to rethink European modern history as a whole, but at the same time to specify its various elements and its fractures and revolutions, which built its cultural and social features.
The periodization of our research envisages what is usually called Early modern and Modern Europe: it goes from the XVI to the XIX centuries because the historical processes we intend to study do not end with the revolutionary epoch of the XVIII century. Finally, we think it would be useful to broaden the methods and perspective of our historical research, in particular to two other disciplines: anthropology, which is necessary in order to rethink the very definition of identity and otherness, and in order to study the ways in which European cultures represented both non-European societies and their own internal worlds, from rural people to heretics; and literature, because its analysis of travel relations and in general of descriptions of otherness increases our understanding of these representations.
The five units will organise seminars and meetings in order to discuss the results of their researches with the scientific communities. It is foreseen the publication of books and articles by the members of the units, and of documents and texts, also of historiography, important for our theme. These publications will appear also on the web, in particular through the two sites web "Cromohs" (http://www.cromohs.unifi.it) and "Eliohs" (http://www.eliohs.unifi.it). <<<

First Results

1)Comment to critical edition of book IX of Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes (Goggi);
2)Publication of a book on African people and exhibitions in XIXcentury (Abbattista)
3)Article on French revolution and racial problems (Mannucci);
4)Book on Orientalism and tolerance in XVIIIcentury France (Minuti);
5)Critical edition of the work by Mezzabarba (Di Fiore)
6)article on Jesuit missionaries (Imbruglia)

The units will organise seminars and meetings.1)critical edition of books XV-XIX of Histoire des deux Indes by Raynal (Goggi);
2)research about the lexicon of Histoire des deux Indes (Gille);
3) article on Thomasius-Pufendorf (Tortarolo);
4) article on literature about african people(Biondi);
5)articles on acculturation in jesuit missions /Cuturi e Guerre);

The units will organise seminars and meetings.1)Book on universalism and tolerance in XVIcentury(Felici)
2)Book on Soranzo(Firpo)
3)Article on french travellers in Russia (Fornasier);
4)Article on relationship among Venice and Dalmatian world(Trebbi);
5)Article on catholic missions in South Italy XVIIth-XVIIIth centuries(Romeo).

The units will organise seminars and meetings.1)italian edition of works by Burke on Empire (Francesconi)
2)article on Enlightenment historians and economists about non-european countries (Platania)
3)critical edition of La decouverte de la verité et le monde detrompé, à l'egard de la philosophie et la religion, by J. C. von Hatzfeld (Tortarolo and Gaddo);
4)book on censorship in Early Modern Europe(Tortarolo);
5)article about italian merchants in central Europe (Mazzei);
6)articles on Enlightenment debates about missions (Imbruglia and Sebastiani)

The units will organise seminars and meetings. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The scientific basis of our program is constituted by the new historiography which has largely transformed traditional interpretations and emphasized the building of the modern European cultural identity from XVI to XIX centuries. The encounter of disciplines such as history, anthropology and literature has accordingly posed interrogations apt to represent that complex historical process. At the centre of this process, there is the confrontation between identity and otherness. From this point of view, La formazione storica della alterità. Studi di storia della tolleranza nell'età moderna, offerti a Antonio Rotondò, 2001, has proved a very important work, showing the longue durée of this question: the conflicts amongst different civilizations and different cultural, social and political worlds within European civilization brought forth the ideal of tolerance, interpreted as a right to civil freedom. This new historiographic trend (possibly to be linked to other studies, such as J. OEsterhammel, 1998, J. Israel, 2001, and the collection «Studi e testi per la storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVIII», Firenze) is very important especially for the unit of prof. Minuti. Therefore, the central question of this research will be the relationship between otherness and tolerance, especially investigated in the relationship between Europe and Orient, West and Central Europe. Together with the study of the idea of otherness, the other theme will be the genesis and different forms of tolerance.
The unit directed by prof. Tortarolo will study the relationship between otherness and politics. This unit intends to draw an original history of the ideas and of the politics of the European elites. These were engaged in the dramatic confrontation with religious and ideological diversity, which was uncovered within the boundaries of Europe itself from XVI century onwards. Recent works (Histories of Heresy, 2002, and The Berlin Refuge, 2003), while emphasizing the complexity of the European horizon of religious identities in the XVI-XVIII centuries, have also underlined the present need of rethinking the categories of both religious and philosophical identities. This unit will pay particular attention to those institutions which made the dialectics between identity and otherness possible: the European States of XVI-XVIII centuries and their political and religious life; the French revolution and its debates about racism; the public opinion of the XVIII century, which will be analysed in its growing autonomy and freedom, but also in its opposite aspect of censorship. Finally, this unit will study the birth of the theory of natural rights (see now Hochstrasser, 2000), where to highlight the new and complex relationship amongst civil society, natural society and State.
This latter theme is explored also by the unit led by prof. Abbattista, in the perspective of the political relationship between centre and periphery. An interesting case is offered by the history of Venice, linking, for the first time in modern Europe, the republican tradition and the politics of conquest. This subject will also be studied in reference to the British Empire (see ex. g. C. A. Bayly, 2004; J. Hart, 2003, U. S. Metha, 1999; The Oxford History of the British Empire,1998-1999). The question about a nation's right to conquest and the forms of its dominion allows us to rethink in an original way the political thought of the end of the XVIII century and the first half of the XIX century. The result will be the emphasis on the link between the imperial nation's political structure, its ideology of diversity, and its social relationship with the non-European people. The third theme of this unit is the study of the genesis of the image of African people circulating in the XIX century. In Europe the perception of these people was informed by the ways in which they were shown and represented to a large public. Another form of perception of the African diversity is constituted by its literary representation: especially in the rich literary production by female writers, who mirrorred their own subjective experience in the colonial settings. In this case, a specific literary perspective of analysis will add to the historical and anthropological methodologies.
The interlacing of literature, anthropology and history is also present in the researches carried out by prof. Goggi's unit. Starting from important studies (see Marouby, 1990, P. Roger, 2002, and S. Linon-Chipon, 2003), this unity intends to study the XVI-XIX centuries French travel literature and its political and socio-anthropological aspects through three case-studies: Brazil, Russia, Italy. The dichotomy of the par-deçà and par-delà world characterizes the representation of its protagonists: Brazilian savages in Calvinistic relations, Russian peasants or Italian people according to French travellers. This European discourse about otherness became the history of Europe itself.
The unit led by prof. Imbruglia will see the mission as one of the most important structures in the relationship between modern Europe and otherness (ex. g. Prosperi, 1996, and Prentiss, 2003). The study of the history and the theories of the mission allows the grasp of its essential function in the long history of colonialism and acculturation, while also reveiling the genesis of the image itself of otherness. On the one hand, the unit will discuss the patterns of the catholic mission (for instance, the Jesuit, Dominican and Episcopal); on the other hand, it will focus on the anthropological categories that show an opposite dynamics of the conflict between power and diversity. These categories uncover the strategies adopted by native people to defend their identities against European otherness. Central to the research will also be the study of the missions in Europe, which were used by the religious and political elites in order to control the life of urban and rural people. Finally, this unit will discuss the ambivalent end of the mission. As a tool and a symbol of the spiritual power of superstition, mission was firmly criticised by Enlightenment; at the same time, many thinkers of that period saw in the missionary strategy of the relationship with non-European people an useful tool for the politics of modern States: the new missionaries had to be the civil servants of colonial empires.
The intention behind the strong intersection amongst the five unities' researches is that the same problem needs to be articulated in different but linked angles. Therefore, the general research program has been divided in four phases: I) knowledge of non-European people; II) The American world and science of man; III) Europe and internal otherness; IV) Secularization, cultural identity and relationship with otherness. <<<