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 >>>

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 >>>

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 >>>