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. In order to accomplish these goals, our units have created two relevant links with international scientific nets. Many of the components of the units take part in the Interlink project "La cultura europea e la riflessione sulla 'alterita'': storiografia, politica e scienze dell'uomo nella nascita del mondo moderno (secoli xvi-xix)" (European culture and the problem of otherness: historiography, politics and sceinces of man at the origin of modern world, XVI-XIX centuries), directed by prof G. Abbattista; furthermore, thanks to prof. I. Porciani, member of the unit of prof. Imbruglia, the units can take part into the project of the European Science Foundation project on the writing of national histories (NHIST) (http://www.esf.org/publication/171/NHIST.pdf), directed by prof. Porciani.
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 in a new collection of studies conceived as a natural destination for the researches of the whole project (Identità e alterità nell’Europa moderna. Ricerche e documenti di storia della cultura, Naples, Bibliopolis), and on the web, through the two sites web "Cromohs" (http://www.cromohs.unifi.it) and "Eliohs" (http://www.eliohs.unifi.it).
directed by proff. Abbattista and Minuti. These sites will offer an appropriate communication area in the internet for the publication of texts and documents relevant for the research subjects of the Florence unit and the other units of the national program. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The subject of our research program has been brought forth by a deep and interdisciplinary confrontation with most recent historiography and with other disciplines, such as anthropology and literature, which raised new questions and new answers This subject represents the common issue of the five research units which will develop it according to their own perspectives.

Therefore, the scientific basis of our program is constituted by the new historiography which challenged traditional interpretations and emphasized the building of the modern European cultural identity from XVI to XIX centuries. At the centre of this process, there is the confrontation between identity and otherness.

An essential point of reference remains La formazione storica dell’alterità (2001), to which it is useful to link other research, as those of Österhammel 1998, Israel 2001, P. Grell and R. Porter 2000, Paganini and Tortarolo 2004, H. Pena-Ruiz 2005, and the publications of the collection «Studi e testi per la storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVIII», Florence,Olschki. This research showed that an essential feature of the conflict and confront with non European civilizations and with alternative social and cultural worlds has been the emergence of toleration as right to the civil freedom. This research line highlights the relationship between otherness (Istanbul 2003 and Trieste 2004) and toleration as the crucial problem in the confrontation between identity and external otherness. In this way, it is possible to describe how the modern ideal of toleration was born (Kilcullen 1988, Mechoulan 1993, Berkvens-Stevelinck et alii 1997, Laursen 1999), in the context of relationship between Europe and East (Lach- van Kley 1993) on the one hand, and, within Europe itself, between Italy and Central Europe, on the other. The discovery in European history of internal otherness has been of equal importance. In this perspective, the religious otherness has been of tremendous importance. Rightly, a glorious historical tradition, recently revamped, has considered it as an answer to the problem of social cohesion, and as heterodoxy transformed in historical tradition. The studies about the political system of monarchy and its integration with different religions (Dreitzel 1995, Breuer 1995, Firpo 2003), and upon histories of heresies have described the theories of religious toleration as expression of various attitudes in reference to different areas of religious coexistence. Other interesting inquiries have been done also into the growing of religious heterodoxy between underground and public communication, and they have underlined the importance of clandestine circulation of ideas which challenged traditional and religious beliefs radically. These theories of atheist interpretation of the cosmos implied the refusal of religious diversity in name of an universal theory of deism (Charles-Daubert 1999, Paganini et alii 2002, Mulsow 2003). This relationship between religion, heterodoxy and lay foundation of the political State emerged again during the French revolution and along the 19th century (Lalouette 1997 and 2005, Gainot 2001, Martin 2005).
We can say that the historical research is now again facing the problem of the Enlightened religious secularization. This issue is crucial for modern historiography, because it had been at the core of historicism. The dynamics of Enlightened secularization is to be found also in the forms of relationship and of knowledge of otherness, because of its critique to ecclesiastical structures in name of modern, secular forms of sociability. A good example of this dynamics comes from the recent research upon the idea and practice of mission (Prosperi 1996, Sanneh 2002, Prentiss 2003). Mission has been studied as one of the most important features in the history of the social disciplinary process both of internal and external otherness. In this way, with the 17th century theory of natural right and with Enlightenment a lay new language and new theory of jurisprudence (Bell 1994, Muldrew 1998, Ascher 1999), and of ethics, of politics and of science of man came to light (Pagden 1987, Tuck 1993, Haakonssen 2000, Hochstrasser 2000). Recent historiography of Enlightenment has investigated the primitivistic ideas of Enlightenment and its philosophic confrontation with otherness (Landucci 1972, still very useful), and in particular Montesquieu (Volpihac Auger 1995, Larrere 2005), Diderot (Dulac 1998, Goggi 1994), and Raynal (Bancarel and Goggi 2000). Armitage (2000) has studied the ideological presence of these theories in the building of British empire.
The Enlightenment idea of civilization has been studied also in a very interesting and fruitful interdisciplinary perspective using ethnology, political history and history of literature, anthropology or ethnographic descriptions in ‘Facing each other: the world’s perception of Europe and Europe’s perception of the world’ (Pagden 1993 and 2000). This theme has inspired a lot of research upon Americans and Brasilians (Lestriuant 1990, 1996 and 2003; Thérien 1988, Lukes 2003); upon the images of black persona at the end of 18th century (Hoffmann 1973, Benot 2003 and 2005), or those of the Turk (Davis 203, Matschke 2004, hadri 2004). This last research line has been recently discussed also in reference to orientalism. The psychological and theoretical experience of the travel has been intelligently analysed both in reference to non European otherness (Berthiaume 1990, Van den Cruysse 1991, Linon Chipon 2003, Moureau 2005, Bossi 2005), and to European otherness and context: for instance, the travel to Italy (Waquet 1989, Kanceff 1992 and 1994, Wolff 2001, Brilli 2003), and to Russia (Karp 2001). These studies have shown in the 17th and 18th centuries the use of the dichotomic category of the world «par deça» and «par delà»: in all these descriptions of other civilizations the discourse became inquiry into European own identity, and the history of otherness became history of European civilization.
The image of otherness and the idea of civilization lost their cosmopolite character at the end of 18th century and became an important element of the national identity (Chatterjee 1986, Berger 1999). The relationship between Enlightenment and knowledge of otherness did not confine itself to the external otherness, but it extended itself to new forms of knowledge of the internal otherness. At the middle of 18th century the new science of historiography was able to uncover the truth of remote ages with its modern philosophical and philological perspectives (O’Brien 1997, Woomersley 2002, Pocock 1999-2005), becoming the most important human science of the XIX century. New research are now exploring not only the historical narratives, but also the origin of the historian as teacher, the public and professional aspect of historiography, the role played by women in this science (Conrad 2002, Nora 1984-1992, Ricuperati 2005, Porciani 2004). The national histories were often also history of expansion, of conquest, of empires: this aspect is the enjeu of lively debates of the ‘world history’ (Chakrabarty 2000, Mc Leod 2000) and of the post colonial studies (Chatterjee 1993, Young 2003). Some recent research on the building and on the representation of the empire in English (Whelan 1996, Muthu 2003) and French culture (Benot 1988 e 1982, Blanchard 2005) have proved of great interest. The attention paid to the ideological and political dimensions of the imperial systems has brought forth research upon cultural representations, through which those systems tried to find a new legitimization. Besides the studies upon literature, already mentioned, research has been made about the exposition of exotic human beings in European towns, since the 15th century up to the XIX century (Rydell 1984, Schwarz 2001, Bancel 2002). <<<