Jan Surman is a historian of science and scholarship, specializing in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Vienna and has worked at the Herder Institute in Marburg, the IFK in Vienna, and the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Since 2021 he is a researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, with projects on Czechoslovak-Polish scientific entanglements under socialism and images of science in Czechoslovakia 1918-1968. His research focuses on scientific transfer, academic mobility, and scientific internationalism in East Central Europe. Address: Gabčíkova 2362/10 Prague 8 182 00
The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. W... more The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. We describe the characteristics of contemporary ‘intellectual activism’ and the growing network of small civil and political groups in today’s Russia. We show that Russian civil society remains fragile and fragmented; the public discussion is not focused on strategies of resistance to arbitrariness but on constructing moral categories such as the wide and vague concept of ‘new ethics’. We also show how outsiders appear among contemporary Russian dissidents, who are not supported by most independent leaders and intellectuals – these are young ‘new leftists’ and feminist activist groups. These political activists find themselves under pressure from both the siloviki and the authorities and in the focus of criticism of opposition leaders, becoming, in fact, dissidents among dissidents in contemporary Russia.
Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scientific Entanglements in Newer History, 2022
This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine... more This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine ungesetzte Wordversion. Für die zitierbare Fassung sehe: Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, edited by Jan Surman et al. Marburg: Verlag Herder Institut 2022. ISBN 978-3-87969-466-2. (https://www.herder-institut.de/en/event/new-release-science-interconnected/ )
Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, 2022
This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine... more This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine ungesetzte Wordversion. Für die zitierbare Fassung sehe: Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, edited by Jan Surman et al. Marburg: Verlag Herder Institut 2022. ISBN 978-3-87969-466-2. (https://www.herder-institut.de/en/event/new-release-science-interconnected/ )
What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this... more What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this issue covers: What do the leading archaeologist of the former German Democratic Republic in re-unifying Germany, Bulgarian scientists in the late 1960s and some recent discussions about representations of Polish ancient history have in common? They all operate along fractures in the crust of scientific authority, they mark moments in time when classical figures of knowledge reach or breach authoritative status. They serve to study how authoritative speech bridged and manifested these relations and help identify areas where scientific authority is contested. This volume transcends this topological rhetoric with a praxeological take on scientific authority. Concentrating on authority figures, it brings specific margins and contestations into sight. The papers in this volume study cases from former socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, and thus examples that present us with the complexity of agonal relations within state socialism and post-socialist transformations that complicate matters of scientific authority in many ways, yet also offer illustrative examples of shifting constellations of (scientific) authority.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2021
Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this... more Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this discipline as a scientific, positive endeavor. At the same time, he was a representative of psychic sciences, following a strictly positivist attitude to researching psychic phenomena. This article discusses the key event of his career, experiments with the famous medium Eusapia Palladino, in Warsaw, between late 1893 and early 1894. Ochorowicz's séances with Palladino attracted wide local and international attention and improved his standing as an internationally leading psychic researcher. In Warsaw, however, these experiments were fiercely controversial and, as a result, Ochorowicz was discredited and left the city. As I argue, this dissociation of credibilities was the outcome of a changing media landscape in the late nineteenth century. While Ochorowicz's strategy of boundary-work and asserting his credibility aimed at scholarly media, it proved fatal when facing intensive, daily coverage in the popular press.
While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institu... more While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institutional, it became less visible internationally following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This article looks into the institutional state of history-of-science writing in Poland, and discusses several key focal points that emerged in recent years. By distinguishing between the core history of science, written at institutions devoted to this discipline, and broader academic discussions concerning science's past, I claim that, in recent decades, more important topical and theoretical innovation has come from what we can term the "esoteric" circle (referring to Ludwik Fleck)-that is, scholars who do not identify themselves as historians of science. Given that those scholars from abroad who are interested in Polish history of science are in fact general historians, we get a strong impression that we are witnessing a deeper turn in the field, one with diminishing specialization and greater attention paid to situating science in a broader range of societal processes.
In: The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848-1918, eds. Mitchell G. Ash and Jan J. Surman. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 1-29., 2012
Aleksandra Nuč, Michaela Wolf (eds.) Das habsburgische Babylon, 1848–1918. Wien: Praesens Verlag 2020, 2020
Nineteenth century Habsburg Empire witnessed the emergence of unprecedented multilingualism in sc... more Nineteenth century Habsburg Empire witnessed the emergence of unprecedented multilingualism in science and scholarship. This fragmentation of assumed universality began through the demise of Latin and its replacement through German and French, and intensified through the development of national languages of science. Translation played a crucial role in this process, as many of the early scientific texts in Slavic languages were translations, but it also was regarded as vital in the breaching of the newly emerged communicational disarray. It was used to make knowledge available to local public, but at the same time to make knowledge published in local languages reach foreign public. Self-translation and „unsigned translation“ played important role in the affirmation that certain authors belonged to respective national communities. Finally, by looking at Habsburg translations we can address how asymmetries of power influence scholarly communication, which is a crucial issue in today's „global English“ time.
Jan Surman, Habsburg Higher Education in the Eyes of Foreigners: Ludwik Tęgoborski and William Wilde, in: Jan Arend (ed.) Science and Empire in Eastern Europe: Imperial Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th Century. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2020, 55-76, 2020
This article deals with two historical analyses of Vormärz higher education in Austria: Ludwik Tę... more This article deals with two historical analyses of Vormärz higher education in Austria: Ludwik Tęgoborski, De l'instruction publique en Autriche, par un diplomate étranger, qui a longtemps réside dans ce pays (Paris: Cousin, 1841) and William Wilde, Austria: its literary, scientific, and medical institutions (Dublin: William Curry Jun. and Company, 1843).
Lehrbücher für den Geschichtsunterricht in Galizien herausgegeben von Bogusław Dybaś und Igor Kąkolewski, 2019
Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Beitrags soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, welche Rolle translatoris... more Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Beitrags soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, welche Rolle translatorische Vorgänge bei der Erstellung und weiteren Verbreitung von Mittelschulbüchern in der Habsburgermonarchie spielten.
Szkolne podręczniki do nauki historii w Galicji, 2019
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie, jaką rolę
w tworzeniu i późniejszym ... more Celem niniejszego artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie, jaką rolę w tworzeniu i późniejszym rozpowszechnianiu podręczników do szkół średnich w monarchii habsburskiej odgrywał proces przekładu.
This chapter maps the fabrication and appropriation of positivism on a global scale. It particula... more This chapter maps the fabrication and appropriation of positivism on a global scale. It particularizes and provincializes positivist universalism. Providing a comparative study of Auguste Comte’s and John Stuart Mill’s conceptions of positivism, it also shows how their disciples pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry that encompassed nature and society, a new science to enlighten mankind and ameliorate their living conditions. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Our fresh approach to global intellectual history demonstrates that positivism was no ready-made message recycled across the globe: initially grafted in response to the local problems of English and French societies, positivism was deracinated, tweaked, and adjusted while being re-elaborated by activists from Rio de Janeiro and Bengal, Istanbul and Vienna.
Jacques Le Rider, Heinz Raschel (Hrsg.), La Galicie (1772-1918) : histoire, société, cultures en ... more Jacques Le Rider, Heinz Raschel (Hrsg.), La Galicie (1772-1918) : histoire, société, cultures en contact. Tours: Université François Rabelais 2010, 175-188
Miles MacLeod, Rocío G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, Ekaterina Smirnova (Hrsg.) Language as a Scientifi... more Miles MacLeod, Rocío G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, Ekaterina Smirnova (Hrsg.) Language as a Scientific Tool: Shaping Scientific Language Across Time and National Traditions. New York: Routledge 2016, 131-148.
„Adolf Dygasiński als Übersetzer: Pädagogische Biographie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur“ O... more „Adolf Dygasiński als Übersetzer: Pädagogische Biographie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur“ OderÜbersetzen, Deutsch-polnisches Übersetzungsjahrbuch - Karl Dedecius Archiv / Polsko-niemiecki rocznik translatorski - Archiwum Karla Dedeciusa, Nr 5-6-7 /2016, 64-76.
The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. W... more The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. We describe the characteristics of contemporary ‘intellectual activism’ and the growing network of small civil and political groups in today’s Russia. We show that Russian civil society remains fragile and fragmented; the public discussion is not focused on strategies of resistance to arbitrariness but on constructing moral categories such as the wide and vague concept of ‘new ethics’. We also show how outsiders appear among contemporary Russian dissidents, who are not supported by most independent leaders and intellectuals – these are young ‘new leftists’ and feminist activist groups. These political activists find themselves under pressure from both the siloviki and the authorities and in the focus of criticism of opposition leaders, becoming, in fact, dissidents among dissidents in contemporary Russia.
Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scientific Entanglements in Newer History, 2022
This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine... more This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine ungesetzte Wordversion. Für die zitierbare Fassung sehe: Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, edited by Jan Surman et al. Marburg: Verlag Herder Institut 2022. ISBN 978-3-87969-466-2. (https://www.herder-institut.de/en/event/new-release-science-interconnected/ )
Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, 2022
This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine... more This is the text version of the article. For the quotable version please consult // Dies ist eine ungesetzte Wordversion. Für die zitierbare Fassung sehe: Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in Modern History, edited by Jan Surman et al. Marburg: Verlag Herder Institut 2022. ISBN 978-3-87969-466-2. (https://www.herder-institut.de/en/event/new-release-science-interconnected/ )
What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this... more What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this issue covers: What do the leading archaeologist of the former German Democratic Republic in re-unifying Germany, Bulgarian scientists in the late 1960s and some recent discussions about representations of Polish ancient history have in common? They all operate along fractures in the crust of scientific authority, they mark moments in time when classical figures of knowledge reach or breach authoritative status. They serve to study how authoritative speech bridged and manifested these relations and help identify areas where scientific authority is contested. This volume transcends this topological rhetoric with a praxeological take on scientific authority. Concentrating on authority figures, it brings specific margins and contestations into sight. The papers in this volume study cases from former socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, and thus examples that present us with the complexity of agonal relations within state socialism and post-socialist transformations that complicate matters of scientific authority in many ways, yet also offer illustrative examples of shifting constellations of (scientific) authority.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2021
Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this... more Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this discipline as a scientific, positive endeavor. At the same time, he was a representative of psychic sciences, following a strictly positivist attitude to researching psychic phenomena. This article discusses the key event of his career, experiments with the famous medium Eusapia Palladino, in Warsaw, between late 1893 and early 1894. Ochorowicz's séances with Palladino attracted wide local and international attention and improved his standing as an internationally leading psychic researcher. In Warsaw, however, these experiments were fiercely controversial and, as a result, Ochorowicz was discredited and left the city. As I argue, this dissociation of credibilities was the outcome of a changing media landscape in the late nineteenth century. While Ochorowicz's strategy of boundary-work and asserting his credibility aimed at scholarly media, it proved fatal when facing intensive, daily coverage in the popular press.
While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institu... more While the history of science in Polish language has a long history, both intellectual and institutional, it became less visible internationally following the fall of the Iron Curtain. This article looks into the institutional state of history-of-science writing in Poland, and discusses several key focal points that emerged in recent years. By distinguishing between the core history of science, written at institutions devoted to this discipline, and broader academic discussions concerning science's past, I claim that, in recent decades, more important topical and theoretical innovation has come from what we can term the "esoteric" circle (referring to Ludwik Fleck)-that is, scholars who do not identify themselves as historians of science. Given that those scholars from abroad who are interested in Polish history of science are in fact general historians, we get a strong impression that we are witnessing a deeper turn in the field, one with diminishing specialization and greater attention paid to situating science in a broader range of societal processes.
In: The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848-1918, eds. Mitchell G. Ash and Jan J. Surman. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 1-29., 2012
Aleksandra Nuč, Michaela Wolf (eds.) Das habsburgische Babylon, 1848–1918. Wien: Praesens Verlag 2020, 2020
Nineteenth century Habsburg Empire witnessed the emergence of unprecedented multilingualism in sc... more Nineteenth century Habsburg Empire witnessed the emergence of unprecedented multilingualism in science and scholarship. This fragmentation of assumed universality began through the demise of Latin and its replacement through German and French, and intensified through the development of national languages of science. Translation played a crucial role in this process, as many of the early scientific texts in Slavic languages were translations, but it also was regarded as vital in the breaching of the newly emerged communicational disarray. It was used to make knowledge available to local public, but at the same time to make knowledge published in local languages reach foreign public. Self-translation and „unsigned translation“ played important role in the affirmation that certain authors belonged to respective national communities. Finally, by looking at Habsburg translations we can address how asymmetries of power influence scholarly communication, which is a crucial issue in today's „global English“ time.
Jan Surman, Habsburg Higher Education in the Eyes of Foreigners: Ludwik Tęgoborski and William Wilde, in: Jan Arend (ed.) Science and Empire in Eastern Europe: Imperial Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th Century. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2020, 55-76, 2020
This article deals with two historical analyses of Vormärz higher education in Austria: Ludwik Tę... more This article deals with two historical analyses of Vormärz higher education in Austria: Ludwik Tęgoborski, De l'instruction publique en Autriche, par un diplomate étranger, qui a longtemps réside dans ce pays (Paris: Cousin, 1841) and William Wilde, Austria: its literary, scientific, and medical institutions (Dublin: William Curry Jun. and Company, 1843).
Lehrbücher für den Geschichtsunterricht in Galizien herausgegeben von Bogusław Dybaś und Igor Kąkolewski, 2019
Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Beitrags soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, welche Rolle translatoris... more Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Beitrags soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, welche Rolle translatorische Vorgänge bei der Erstellung und weiteren Verbreitung von Mittelschulbüchern in der Habsburgermonarchie spielten.
Szkolne podręczniki do nauki historii w Galicji, 2019
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie, jaką rolę
w tworzeniu i późniejszym ... more Celem niniejszego artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie, jaką rolę w tworzeniu i późniejszym rozpowszechnianiu podręczników do szkół średnich w monarchii habsburskiej odgrywał proces przekładu.
This chapter maps the fabrication and appropriation of positivism on a global scale. It particula... more This chapter maps the fabrication and appropriation of positivism on a global scale. It particularizes and provincializes positivist universalism. Providing a comparative study of Auguste Comte’s and John Stuart Mill’s conceptions of positivism, it also shows how their disciples pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry that encompassed nature and society, a new science to enlighten mankind and ameliorate their living conditions. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Our fresh approach to global intellectual history demonstrates that positivism was no ready-made message recycled across the globe: initially grafted in response to the local problems of English and French societies, positivism was deracinated, tweaked, and adjusted while being re-elaborated by activists from Rio de Janeiro and Bengal, Istanbul and Vienna.
Jacques Le Rider, Heinz Raschel (Hrsg.), La Galicie (1772-1918) : histoire, société, cultures en ... more Jacques Le Rider, Heinz Raschel (Hrsg.), La Galicie (1772-1918) : histoire, société, cultures en contact. Tours: Université François Rabelais 2010, 175-188
Miles MacLeod, Rocío G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, Ekaterina Smirnova (Hrsg.) Language as a Scientifi... more Miles MacLeod, Rocío G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, Ekaterina Smirnova (Hrsg.) Language as a Scientific Tool: Shaping Scientific Language Across Time and National Traditions. New York: Routledge 2016, 131-148.
„Adolf Dygasiński als Übersetzer: Pädagogische Biographie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur“ O... more „Adolf Dygasiński als Übersetzer: Pädagogische Biographie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur“ OderÜbersetzen, Deutsch-polnisches Übersetzungsjahrbuch - Karl Dedecius Archiv / Polsko-niemiecki rocznik translatorski - Archiwum Karla Dedeciusa, Nr 5-6-7 /2016, 64-76.
The Russian war against Ukraine resulted in a massive displacement of Ukrainian scholars and incr... more The Russian war against Ukraine resulted in a massive displacement of Ukrainian scholars and increasing attempts to make knowledge on Ukraine. At the same time a discussion emerged about the persons who could legitimately claim expertise about the country. The figure of the expert has oscillated between the “native informants,” whose legitimacy came from their local knowledge, and “Westsplainers,” whose local expertise was questionable. Acknowledging that the question of legitimacy is also a question about the situatedness of knowledge, we propose to investigate practices of knowledge making on the Ukrainian lands, its inhabitants and its recent history, with a focus on the interwar period.
World War I put Ukraine on the mental maps of Europe, both as an imagined construct and as a body of separate political entities. Ukraine appeared on maps and in international debates, and Ukrainian intellectuals were visible like never before due to the global interest in the region and their political impetus to legitimize their own knowledge on Ukraine. After the Great War, the displacement of scholars and politicians increased their entanglements with non-Ukrainian institutions and scholars all over Europe.
At the end of WWI, the imagined Ukrainian lands were integrated as new regions into various states. In the interwar decades they remained a subject of intensified interest in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Inquiries involved a range of actors apart from professional academics, such as officials, citizen scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers, travel authors, translators, memoirists, and photographers. Whether minorities or émigrés, Ukrainian intellectuals were subjected to power relations and often violence, which also limited their possibilities to become part of official discourses about the regions of their origins. The attitude towards them ranged from active cooperation to complete ignorance, often in reciprocity with ideologies and loyalties to state-building, nation-building or geopolitical projects.
We invite you to discuss, among others, the following questions with us:
How was Ukraine made (in)visible in different political settings during the interwar period?
How could Ukrainians influence or establish legitimate knowledge on Ukraine and Ukrainians outside of national circles? Which transnational and transregional networks provided Ukrainians with new possibilities and opportunities?
Who were other actors producing or contesting this knowledge? Which conflict lines arose here, especially beyond the political ones?How did epistemologies of Ukrainian Studies (Ukrainoznavstvo) change since the outbreak of World War I, and how did they influence processes of knowledge-making?
How did Ukrainians produce and institutionalize knowledge on the most recent history, particularly on the period of 1914-1923?
How did hierarchies in different state/local/regional settings influence the circumstances of knowledge production on Ukraine?
How was knowledge on Ukraine obliterated or unmade? Which counter-narratives to Ukrainian approaches were established, and how were they institutionalized? How was ignorance towards Ukraine produced? What forms of violence were instrumentalized to suppress the perspectives of a “national minority”?
Universities in Imperial Austria 1848-1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2018
Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Univers... more Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lasting influence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building, as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict, then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe. By going beyond national narratives, Surman reveals the Empire as a state with institutions divided by language but united by legislation, practices, and other influences. Such an approach allows readers a better view to how scholars turned gradually away from state-centric discourse to form distinct language communities after 1867; these influences affected scholarship, and by examining the scholarly record, Surman tracks the turn. Drawing on archives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine, Surman analyzes the careers of several thousand scholars from the faculties of philosophy and medicine of a number of Habsburg universities, thus covering various moments in the history of the Empire for the widest view. Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918 focuses on the tension between the political and linguistic spaces scholars occupied and shows that this tension did not lead to a gradual dissolution of the monarchy’s academia, but rather to an ongoing development of new strategies to cope with the cultural and linguistic multitude.
This book is the first to trace the origins and significance of positivism on a global scale. Tak... more This book is the first to trace the origins and significance of positivism on a global scale. Taking their cues from Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, positivists pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry for studying nature and society—a new science that would enlighten all of humankind. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Uncovering these worlds of positivism, the volume ranges from India, the Ottoman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe, Russia, and Brazil, examining positivism's impact as one of the most far-reaching intellectual movements of the modern world. Positivists reinvented science, claiming it to be distinct from and superior to the humanities. They predicated political governance on their refashioned science of society, and as political activists, they sought and often failed to reconcile their universalism with the values of multiculturalism. Providing a genealogy of scientific governance that is sorely needed in an age of post-truth politics, this volume breaks new ground in the fields of intellectual and global history, the history of science, and philosophy.
Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and s... more Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.
The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848-1918, 2012
This volume challenges the common belief that scientific knowledge is international. Employing ca... more This volume challenges the common belief that scientific knowledge is international. Employing case studies from Austria, Poland, the Czech lands, and Hungary, the authors show how scientists in the late Habsburg Monarchy confronted the problem of simultaneously nationalizing and internationalizing their knowledge in a multi-national empire during the 'age of nationalism'. The case studies go beyond traditional emphasis on history, ethnology or other 'national' disciplines, ranging from chemistry and physics to natural history, geology, seismology, surgery, linguistics and eugenics, focusing inter alia on scientific terminology in various national languages, supra-national networks of observation or data gathering, language issues in science education, and research practices in cross-national comparison.
Czym jest i po co epistemologia historyczna? To pytanie stawia sobie w książce jeden z najważniej... more Czym jest i po co epistemologia historyczna? To pytanie stawia sobie w książce jeden z najważniejszych autorów tego podejścia do historii nauki, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. W pierwszej części autor przedstawia historyzowanie epistemologii od Emila Du Bois-Reymonda poprzez Michela Foucaulta po Bruno Latoura. W drugiej egzemplifikuje swoje podejście do epistemologii historycznej na przykładach z historii biologii. Najważniejsze pojęcia tej pracy to system eksperymentalny i rzeczy epistemiczne, a tematy sięgają od mikrostruktur eksperymentów z tumorem kur po typologie wizualizacji w naukach przyrodniczych.
The current issue of Historyka, guest edited by Klemens Kaps and Jan Surman, is devoted to postc... more The current issue of Historyka, guest edited by Klemens Kaps and Jan Surman, is devoted to postcolonial studies, a relatively new approach in cultural-historical theories. From a broad range of perspectives covering a number of disciplines, authors exemplify the approach based on Habsburg Galicia, its culture, literature, economy and also the historical memory
of the region stretched between Cracow and L’viv.
The volume proposes a new perspective on the interrelation between the social, political, cultural and economical inequalities in this pluricultural and multireligious region. Although as a part of the Habsburg Empire Galicia was not a “colonial space” in the classic sense, the postcolonial approach enables the historian’s gaze to focus on the relationships between cultures in an imperial setting, opening new perspectives for the study of continental empires in the 19th/20th centuries.
Contents:
Klemens Kaps, Jan Surman
Postcolonial or Post-colonial? Post(-)colonial Perspectives on Habsburg Galicia.....................................7
Franz Leander Fillafer
The “Imperial Idea” and Civilising Missions...........................................................................................37
Christoph Augustynowicz
Blutsaugen als othering oder Reiseerfahrungen aus dem Galizien des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Einige Beobachtungen zu Postkolonialismus und Vampir(ismus)-Diskurs............................................61
Ewa Thompson
Stefan Żeromski’s Ashes as a Postcolonial Narrative..............................................................................77
Klemens Kaps
Kulturelle Differenzen des Ökonomischen: Galizische Entwicklungsdiskurse im Spannungsfeld
räumlicher Funktionalisierung und sozialer Bruchlinien (1772-1848) .................................................97
Danuta Sosnowska
Limitations and Opportunities of Postcolonial Criticism.....................................................................117
Andriy Zayarniuk
Empire, Peasants, National Movements – Galician Postcolonial Triangle? .........................................133
Jan Surman:
Symbolism, Communication and Cultural Hierarchy. Galician Discourses of Language
Hegemony at the Beginning of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.................................................................................................................................................151
Burkhard Wöller
Zivilisierungsmission oder Fremdherrschaft? Die Annexion Rotreußens unter Kasimir III.
im kolonialistischen Diskurs polnischer und ruthenischer Historiker im österreichischen Galizien................................................................................................................................................175
Stefan Simonek
Franko, Mickiewicz, Bahr – Spielarten galizischer Subalternität um 1900..........................................195
Angelique Leszczawski-Schwerk
Juden und Jüdinnen als Postkoloniale Subjekte im Spannungsfeld frauenemanzipatorischer
Bestrebungen (1890 -1914) im österreichischen Galizien ..............................................................213
Dietlind Hüchtker
Rückständigkeit, Fortschritt und Geschichte. Die Rhetorik der
Frauenpolitik am Beispiel Galiziens.....................................................................................................231
Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek, Adam Świątek
The trap of colonialism...The Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia - colonised or colonisers?.......................257
Notes on Authors............................................................................................................................289
Nowy numer "Historyki" jest poświęcony badaniom postkolonialnym
habsburskiej Galicji. Do przygot... more Nowy numer "Historyki" jest poświęcony badaniom postkolonialnym
habsburskiej Galicji. Do przygotowania tomu zaprosiliśmy Klemensa Kapsa
i Jana Surmana, którzy zakończyli pracę nad nim w 2011 roku.
Autorzy obecnego tomu XLII ― literaturoznawcy, kulturoznawcy, historycy ―
podjęli się trudnego zadania przyjrzenia się historii Galicji z perspektywy badań
postkolonialnych.Proponują nowe ujęcie występujących w tym regionie
społecznych, politycznych, kulturalnych i ekonomicznych form zależności. Chociaż
jako część państwa habsburskiego Galicja nie była "przestrzenią kolonialną"
w klasycznym rozumieniu tego pojęcia, podejście postkolonialne pozwala
historykowi uchwycić relacje pomiędzy zamieszkującymi ją społecznościami
i imperialnym centrum oraz otwiera nowe perspektywy dla badań nad imperiami
europejskimi w XIX i XX stuleciu.
(Historyka. Studia Metodologiczne, XLVI, 2016, ss. 423-437)
The conversation deals with ways of w... more (Historyka. Studia Metodologiczne, XLVI, 2016, ss. 423-437) The conversation deals with ways of writing a global history of science and the main methods and concepts needed to do so. Beginning with the questions of non-Eurocentric periodisation, it deals with the issues of sources and key concepts for global historiography like circulation, introduced as a non-dif-fusionist way of looking at the movement of knowledge. Furthermore, issues of go-betweens as actors of bringing different worlds together are discussed.
A b s t r a c t The conversation deals with ways of writing global history of science and the mai... more A b s t r a c t The conversation deals with ways of writing global history of science and the main methods and concepts in doing so. Beginning with the questions of non-Eurocentric periodisation, it deals with the issues of sources and key concepts for global historiography like circulation, introduced as a non-diffusionist way of looking at the movement of knowledge. Furthermore, issues of go-betweens as actors of bringing different worlds together are discussed. K e y w o r d s:
What is special about sciences in Central and Eastern Europe?
What are the obstacles for writing ... more What is special about sciences in Central and Eastern Europe? What are the obstacles for writing histories of science done beyond metropoles? Is this science different than the science in the centers and what makes it so? How imperial are sciences made by representatives of dominant nations compared to nondominant nations? These are some of the questions touched upon in the interview with Michael Gordin, a leading historian of science from Princeton University.
Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy na... more Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy nauki piszący o tym regionie? Czy nauka ta różni się od nauki uprawianej w centrach i w jakim zakresie? Jak bardzo imperialna jest nauka reprezentantów nacji dominujących i niedominujących? To tylko niektóre tematy poruszone w rozmowie z Michaelem Gordinem z Princeton University, jednym z wiodących historyków nauki.
The conversation revolves around the historical epistemology as a special branch of history of
s... more The conversation revolves around the historical epistemology as a special branch of history of science, which was largely in fl uenced by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and his team at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Apart from the discussion of the idea of historical epistemology, its position among the historical disciplines and implications it has for science policy, as well as the issues of experiment as basic unit of science are discussed
The conversation revolves around the historical epistemology as a special branch of history of sc... more The conversation revolves around the historical epistemology as a special branch of history of science, which was largely influenced by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and his team at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Apart from the discussion of the idea of historical epistemology, its position among the historical disciplines and implications it has for science policy, the issues of experiment as basis of research is discussed.
Rec: Doris Bachmann-Medick (red.), The Trans/National Study of Culture:
A Translational Perspecti... more Rec: Doris Bachmann-Medick (red.), The Trans/National Study of Culture: A Translational Perspective, De Gruyter, Berlin–Boston 2014, ss. 271., PRZEGLĄD KULTUROZNAWCZY, NR 1 (27) 2016, s. 113–119
Wielokulturowość: lekcje przeszłości
Recenzja: Understanding Multiculturalism. The Habsburg C... more Wielokulturowość: lekcje przeszłości
Recenzja: Understanding Multiculturalism. The Habsburg Central European Experience, red. Johannes Feichtinger, Gary B. Cohen, Berghahn, Oxford–New York, 2014 (Austrian and Habsburg Studies 17), ss. 246.
Podczas gdy koncept wielokulturowości był w ostatnim czasie obiektem mocnej krytyki, szczególnie ze strony polityki, recenzowana książka obiera inną pozycję, analizując i historyzując go. Spoglądając na Europe Środkową z użyciem nieesecjalizujących czy postkolonialnych koncepcji, autorzy proponują nie tylko nowe sposoby odczytania historii regionu, lecz także nowe kategorie dla przyszłych badań historii kulturowej.
Recenzja: Україна на історіографічній мапі міжвоєнної Європи / Ukraine on the Historiographic Map... more Recenzja: Україна на історіографічній мапі міжвоєнної Європи / Ukraine on the Historiographic Map of Interwar Europe, ред. Ярослава Мельник, Сергій Плохій, Франк Сисин, Валерій Смолій / Yaroslava Melnyk, Serhii Plokhy, Frank Sysyn, Valerii Smolii, Інсти-тут історії України НАН України, 2014, ss. 251.
Opublikowana w /Veröffentlicht in /Published in: Kwartalnik Historyczny CXXII, Nr. 3, 2015, s. 60... more Opublikowana w /Veröffentlicht in /Published in: Kwartalnik Historyczny CXXII, Nr. 3, 2015, s. 606-608.
Rezension zu: Fleck, Ludwik: Denkstile und Tatsachen. Gesammelte Schriften und Zeugnisse, hrsg. v... more Rezension zu: Fleck, Ludwik: Denkstile und Tatsachen. Gesammelte Schriften und Zeugnisse, hrsg. v. Sylwia Werner und Claus Zittel. Berlin 2011, in: H-Soz-Kult, 14.06.2013
Recenzja: Neumann, Birgit; Nünning, Ansgar (Hrsg.): Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture.... more Recenzja: Neumann, Birgit; Nünning, Ansgar (Hrsg.): Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture. Berlin 2012, in: PRZEGLĄD KULTUROZNAWCZY, NR 4 (18) 2013, s. 330–335
Рецензія на книги: Henryk Marek Słoczyński: Światło w dziejarskiej ciemnicy: koncepcja dziejów i ... more Рецензія на книги: Henryk Marek Słoczyński: Światło w dziejarskiej ciemnicy: koncepcja dziejów i interpretacja przeszłości Polski Joachima Lelewela. Kraków: Historia Iagellonica, 2010, s. 610; Monika Baár: Historians and Nationalism. East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press 2010. p. 340
Rezension zu: Italiano, Federico; Rössner, Michael (Hrsg.): Translatio/n. Narration, Media and th... more Rezension zu: Italiano, Federico; Rössner, Michael (Hrsg.): Translatio/n. Narration, Media and the Staging of Differences. Bielefeld 2012, in: H-Soz-Kult, 11.12.2013
Rezension zu: Dybiec, Julian: Polska w orbicie wielkich idei. Polskie przekłady obcojęzycznego pi... more Rezension zu: Dybiec, Julian: Polska w orbicie wielkich idei. Polskie przekłady obcojęzycznego piśmiennictwa 1795–1918, Tom 1 [Im Orbit großer Ideen. Polnische Übersetzungen des fremdsprachigen Schrifttums 1795–1918, Teil 1]. Warszawa 2011, in: H-Soz-Kult, 27.06.2014
Rezension zu: Wolf, Michaela: Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens. Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in de... more Rezension zu: Wolf, Michaela: Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens. Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918. Wien 2012, in: H-Soz-Kult, 18.10.2012
Rezension zu: Franc, Martin; Kostlán, Antonín; Míšková, Alena (Hrsg.): Bohemia docta. K historick... more Rezension zu: Franc, Martin; Kostlán, Antonín; Míšková, Alena (Hrsg.): Bohemia docta. K historickým kořenům vědy v českých zemích [Zu den historischen Wurzeln der Wissenschaft in den böhmischen Ländern]. Prag 2010, in: H-Soz-Kult, 19.06.2012
Rezension zu: Kolář, Pavel: Geschichtswissenschaft in Zentraleuropa. Die Universitäten Prag, Wien... more Rezension zu: Kolář, Pavel: Geschichtswissenschaft in Zentraleuropa. Die Universitäten Prag, Wien und Berlin um 1900. Leipzig 2008, in: H-Soz-Kult, 02.03.2009
Rezension zu: Müller, Reinhard: Marienthal. Das Dorf - Die Arbeitslosen - Die Studie. Innsbruck u... more Rezension zu: Müller, Reinhard: Marienthal. Das Dorf - Die Arbeitslosen - Die Studie. Innsbruck u.a. 2008, in: H-Soz-Kult, 24.06.2008
Do Professors walk? Academic commuting and urban development in the Habsburg Metropolis 1848-1918, 2017
As der Ring replaced Viennese fortifications and Vienna started developing into a metropolis, the... more As der Ring replaced Viennese fortifications and Vienna started developing into a metropolis, the university began growing with it. New main building was erected just meters from former city walls. While this might seem as a small change, those professors who lived near the former main building, had now to take a healthy walk before they reached their new offices and lecture halls. In my talk I will concentrate on the changes in urban infrastructure of the university 1848-1918 looking at the effects of university's relocation, but also erection of new institutes, at the places of living of university staff. By looking at the addresses of professors, Privatdozenten but also assistants at the university in the Habsburg capital I will show the academic topography of the city and changes it encountered with city's urbanization. I will also discuss the idea and practice of the so called Naturalwohnung (here a flat within institute facilities) and arguments used to achieve it.
Презентація публікації "Постколоніальна Галичина: перспективи й можливості" та дискусія про постк... more Презентація публікації "Постколоніальна Галичина: перспективи й можливості" та дискусія про постколоніальні студії Презентер: др. Ян Сурман Диспутант: др. Василь Расевич 22 жовтня 2013 р. Центр міської історії, Львів (Україна)
Prezentacja dr Jana Surmana pt. "Kolonialne odczytanie Galicji" oraz dyskusja wokół tomu "Galicja postkolonialna: możliwości i granice" (pod red. J. Surmana i K. Kapsa). Dyskusję poprowadził dr Wasyl Rasewycz. 22 października 2013 Centrum Historii Miejskiej, Lwów (Ukraina)
Presentation of the Publication "Postcolonial Galicia: Prospects and Possibilities" and the Discussion about Postcolonial Studies Speaker: dr. Jan Surman Disputant: dr. Vasyl Rasevych October 22, 2013 Center for Urban History, Lviv (Ukraine)
The thesis investigates the development and mobility patterns of scholars active at the universit... more The thesis investigates the development and mobility patterns of scholars active at the universities in Cisleithania during the period 1848-1918. Applying the analytical tools of cultural geography, it demonstrates how the production of academic space through academic mobility changed over time, establishing language-defined systems with their own rules and hierarchies. From the late eighteenth century, the question of the language of scholarship increasingly influenced academic communities, especially in the Central Europe. In the Habsburg Empire several languages held claims to being developed enough for serving as the mediums of scientific instruction – yet, the privileged role of German language was sustained for political reasons. After 1848, this tension influenced scientific policy, as universities with different languages of instruction were allowed in Galicia and then in Bohemia. Concurrently, academic mobility increasingly extended beyond the boundaries of the Habsburg Monarchy, and non-Habsburg scholars were appointed to chairs from 1848, comprising at times more than a quarter of the lecturers at individual universities. Especially at germanophone academies and in Galicia, the number of foreign scholars rose, illustrating the dominance of language affiliations over state dependence. Galician universities in particular, became centers for education for Polish and Ruthenian speakers from three empires, striving to gather the best polonophone scholars as well. Germanophone universities were partially included in the network of the German Confederation/Empire, but later in the century turned more to their own offspring and developed a hierarchical system with discernible Habsburg-bound career patterns. In the case of Jewish scholars, this pattern was disrupted due to anti-Semitic hostility at the provincial academies; especially in the politicized disciplines, philosophy and history, the ministry also favored the appointments of Catholic scholars. Despite the turn to a fostering of their own culturally defined scholarship, Habsburg universities remained entangled by common frontiers, which proved highly influential on personal and institutional levels.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. B... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bio... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Bi... more Disclaimer: This database is an integral part of Jan Surman, Habsburg Universities 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Vienna 2012, and as such the same restrictions apply. If used, please cite it accordingly.
Conference at Prague/Liblice, 13-15 October 2022, organised by the research initiative Political ... more Conference at Prague/Liblice, 13-15 October 2022, organised by the research initiative Political Epistemologies of Eastern Europe (www.uni-erfurt.de/to/5HZUPwGJ1oXN3cO)
With the focus on Russian-language media, it is our intention to place them within the recent glo... more With the focus on Russian-language media, it is our intention to place them within the recent global alterations of media landscape and not particularizing it, preferably by comparative approaches. We are thus inviting papers inquiring into changes that affected “truth figures” and “truth scenes” after 1989 and the collapse of the bipolar world order, that situate local particularity within global trends. We are particularly interested in discussing the conceptual frameworks with which the Russian and international situation can be analyzed beyond the simplifying rhetorical figures like “true”, “fake”, “propaganda” etc. Please send us short proposals (up to 300 words) by 28 February 2019 along with a CV or a link to your online CV. The organisers will seek to reimburse expenditures for travel and accommodation. Please indicate in your application if you would need reimbursement
Political Epistemologies of Eastern Europe
International Workshop organized by Friedrich Cain, Di... more Political Epistemologies of Eastern Europe International Workshop organized by Friedrich Cain, Dietlind Hüchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg, and Jan Surman Erfurt, Germany, 24./25. November 2017
The first half of the 20th century was an age of global accelerated social and political transformation, at the time and afterwards conceived as either evolution, revolution, or reform. While the entity of Eastern, Middle-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe was heterogeneous, it was home to a number of parallel processes inducing what seem to be similar epistemologies, varying only in local forms. To localize these variations, our workshop focuses on reflections on science, scholarship and higher education done in this region from the end of WWI until the 1960s.
The scholars we want to focus on were not only “scientists of science”, but often analyzed and even heavily influenced political and social change from their specific standpoints, ranging from philosophy, history, sociology, psychology to especially pedagogy. However, most of them positioned their projects at transdisciplinary junctures. They were eager to introduce brand new sciences or at least to fundamentally reshape existing disciplines. Many politically engaged scholars suggested and helped to implement programs to investigate science, thought or creativity in order to foster individual, social or national progress. We understand such projects as political epistemologies – theories of knowledge, that are preconditioned by political convictions. In times of national and cultural plurality – either multiplication or fragmentation – these theories often emphasized a plurality of knowledge.
Our workshop aims to investigate such political epistemologies in their respective academic, regional or national embedding. The workshop has two main interests: First, to uncover the panorama of contributors that goes beyond such prominent figures like Alfred Tarski or Ludwik Fleck in Warsaw and Lviv, Jan Patočka and Emmanuel Rádl in Prague, Boris Hessen and Aleksander Bogdanov in Moscow and St. Petersburg or Karl Mannheim and Michael Polanyi, both born and socialized in Budapest. For this we particularly encourage contributions on persons and places hitherto marginalized in recent research. Second, we want to investigate different theoretical concepts and practical methods that originated in the region and uncover biographies of these concepts and methods, whether local or transnational.
The workshop is envisioned as a first of a series of meetings on (Eastern) European Epistemologies and is meant to open up the discussion on the shape of the respective workshops as well as their possible geographical, topical and personal scope.
(Organizers: Katharina Kühn (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University o... more (Organizers: Katharina Kühn (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University of Giessen), Dr Rocío G. Sumillera (Universidad de Granada), and Dr Jan Surman (Herder Institute, Marburg)) In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been drawn to interdisciplinary research between the fields of Translation Studies and History of Science, which has shed light on, for instance, the workings of scientific communities, the dissemination of knowledge across languages and cultures, and the transformation in the process of that knowledge and of the scientific communities involved. Translators are brought to the fore, and if they were once treated as anecdotal actors in scientific exchanges, they are now understood as key agents. The Translation in Science, Science in Translation conference precisely engages in all these questions suggested by the conversation between Translation Studies and History of Science, and understands language as a complex phenomenon that includes dialects, sociolects and disciplinary tongues, and science as encompassing the natural and the social sciences. The focus is from early modernity to the present, and the conference’s translational perspective also applies to movements across disciplines, and to communication between scholars and lays.
The 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical ... more The 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe.
In arguments about the current refugee crisis, East European heads of state have repeatedly claimed that their countries have never been perceived as desirable destinations; therefore, they shall never be such. We would like to take the occasion of the 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe to investigate this claim. “The Knowledge Factor” offers an opportunity to discuss the history of refugees in, not from, Eastern Europe and the role knowledge inherent to or associated with refugees has played in the interaction with host societies. The focus lies on the twentieth century from the Balkan Wars of 1912 until its ultimate end in 2001.
Keynote: Ilse Lazaroms: „Origins Revisited: The Lost Landscapes of Joseph Roth’s Eastern Europe“
Die Fragen der Schrift, Textualität und (Un-)Übersetzbarkeit standen im Zentrum des dekonstrukt... more Die Fragen der Schrift, Textualität und (Un-)Übersetzbarkeit standen im Zentrum des dekonstruktiven Denkens Derridas. Texte verstand er nicht als geschlossene Bedeutungsträger, sondern als differenzielle Verkettungen, die immer auch auf Nichtgesagtes, Ausgeschlossenes, Ausgegrenztes verweisen.
In einer Reihe von Texten zur Rolle des Übersetzens, wie „Was ist eine ‚relevante‘ Übersetzung?“ (2001), beschrieb Derrida den Prozess der Translation als eine dekonstruktive Transformation, die Differenzen erzeugt. Der Workshop „Derrida übersetzen“ fügt dieser Theorie der Translation in Bezug auf die Übersetzung der Schriften des französischen Philosophen eine praxeologische Perspektive in zweifacher Hinsicht hinzu: Erstens werden mit den eingeladenen Gästen ihre Übersetzungen diskutiert. Wir fragen danach, wie kontext- und zeitgebunden die Übersetzungen auf der Sprach- und Konzeptebene sind bzw. wie die ÜbersetzerInnen und PhilosophInnen ihre Translationspraxis wahrnehmen und reflektieren. Zweitens wird gefragt, welche Gründe die ÜbersetzerInnen Derridas in den 1970er-Jahren und in der Gegenwart zu den deutschsprachigen Übersetzungen bewogen. Der Workshop entwickelt eine Perspektive auf Übersetzungen als konkrete Interventionen, Irritationen, Inskriptionen und produktive Transformationen in ihren jeweiligen sprachlichen, philosophischen und politischen Kontexten und schließlich in Bezug auf Derridas eigenes Denken.
17.11.2016: 09:30 - 18:30 Uhr
KONZEPTION: Jan Surman (Marburg), Monika Wulz (Zürich)
TEILNEHMERINNEN: Peter Engelmann (Wien), Rodolphe Gasché (Buffalo), Ludwig Jäger (Aachen/Köln), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin), Esther von der Osten (Berlin), Markus Sedlaczek (München), Jan Surman (Marburg), Michael Wetzel (Bonn), Monika Wulz (Zürich)
Als Grundlage des Roundtable I dient der Text "Insister. Á Jacques Derrida", Paris: Galilée 2006, von
Hélène Cixous. Dieser Text kann auf Anfrage an Interessierte versandt werden (losenicky@ifk.ac.at).
Call for Papers
International Conference “Translation in Science, Science in Translation”
30-31 ... more Call for Papers
International Conference “Translation in Science, Science in Translation” 30-31 March 2017, Justus Liebig University Giessen Deadline for applications: 31 July 2016
Invited speakers: Dr Doris Bachmann-Medick (Giessen), Dr Maeve Olohan (Manchester), Dr Benedikt Perak (Rijeka)
Organization The conference is organized by Katharina Kühn (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University of Giessen), Dr Rocío G. Sumillera (Universidad de Granada), and Dr Jan Surman (Herder Institute, Marburg), in collaboration with the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), the Giessen Graduate School for Humanities (GGK), the Giessen Centre for East European Studies (GiZo), the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association, the Department for Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, and the University of Granada.
The 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical ... more The 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, 8-9 December 2016
Annual Conference of the Leibniz Graduate School “History, Knowledge, Media in East Central
Europ... more Annual Conference of the Leibniz Graduate School “History, Knowledge, Media in East Central Europe”
Do-it-Yourself! Subversive practices and informal knowledge 19-20 November 2015 Venue: The Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association, Gisonenweg 5-7, 35037 Marburg Organizers: Sarah Czerney, Jan Surman, Ina Alber
Abstract:
It has long been established that Central Europe was not a classic colonial space but... more Abstract: It has long been established that Central Europe was not a classic colonial space but deserves to be analyzed using tools developed by postcolonial thinkers. In this paper I will continue deliberations started in 2012 with Postcolonial Galicia as to which postcolonialism is suitable for Habsburg and post-Habsburg space. I argue that postcolonial tools and categories do more harm than good when used uncritically for entangled spaces such as continental empires, where categories of othering were fluid and mostly still composed in the nationalist discourse. Furthermore, discourse of othering was consciously applied by national activists to achieve their particularist aims such as reduction of multilinguality and nationalist civilizing missions. This process was not (only) anti-imperial, but at the same time imperial since it created new dependencies and internal colonialisms. Moreover, categories developed during the imperial period continued to haunt Central Europe long after, presenting themselves in cultural paternalism through “civilizing missions” (e.g. in Interwar Eastern Poland) up to post-1989 cultural cleavages.
Fluid transitions between hegemonic and subaltern and the consequences thereof are but one of several aspects which can be highlighted through application of postcolonial approach. In my talk I will sketch out several of them, with emphasis on the production of “us” and “them” categories around 1900 and the ways they outlived the empire. I will look at both the West and the East of the Empire trying to overcome the post-imperial national narrative and argue that albeit multilingual, Habsburg period much less multicultural than post-imperial writings made it.
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Papers by Jan Surman
w tworzeniu i późniejszym rozpowszechnianiu podręczników do szkół średnich w monarchii habsburskiej odgrywał proces przekładu.
w tworzeniu i późniejszym rozpowszechnianiu podręczników do szkół średnich w monarchii habsburskiej odgrywał proces przekładu.
World War I put Ukraine on the mental maps of Europe, both as an imagined construct and as a body of separate political entities. Ukraine appeared on maps and in international debates, and Ukrainian intellectuals were visible like never before due to the global interest in the region and their political impetus to legitimize their own knowledge on Ukraine. After the Great War, the displacement of scholars and politicians increased their entanglements with non-Ukrainian institutions and scholars all over Europe.
At the end of WWI, the imagined Ukrainian lands were integrated as new regions into various states. In the interwar decades they remained a subject of intensified interest in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Inquiries involved a range of actors apart from professional academics, such as officials, citizen scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers, travel authors, translators, memoirists, and photographers. Whether minorities or émigrés, Ukrainian intellectuals were subjected to power relations and often violence, which also limited their possibilities to become part of official discourses about the regions of their origins. The attitude towards them ranged from active cooperation to complete ignorance, often in reciprocity with ideologies and loyalties to state-building, nation-building or geopolitical projects.
We invite you to discuss, among others, the following questions with us:
How was Ukraine made (in)visible in different political settings during the interwar period?
How could Ukrainians influence or establish legitimate knowledge on Ukraine and Ukrainians outside of national circles? Which transnational and transregional networks provided Ukrainians with new possibilities and opportunities?
Who were other actors producing or contesting this knowledge? Which conflict lines arose here, especially beyond the political ones?How did epistemologies of Ukrainian Studies (Ukrainoznavstvo) change since the outbreak of World War I, and how did they influence processes of knowledge-making?
How did Ukrainians produce and institutionalize knowledge on the most recent history, particularly on the period of 1914-1923?
How did hierarchies in different state/local/regional settings influence the circumstances of knowledge production on Ukraine?
How was knowledge on Ukraine obliterated or unmade? Which counter-narratives to Ukrainian approaches were established, and how were they institutionalized? How was ignorance towards Ukraine produced? What forms of violence were instrumentalized to suppress the perspectives of a “national minority”?
The Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building, as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict, then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe.
By going beyond national narratives, Surman reveals the Empire as a state with institutions divided by language but united by legislation, practices, and other influences. Such an approach allows readers a better view to how scholars turned gradually away from state-centric discourse to form distinct language communities after 1867; these influences affected scholarship, and by examining the scholarly record, Surman tracks the turn.
Drawing on archives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine, Surman analyzes the careers of several thousand scholars from the faculties of philosophy and medicine of a number of Habsburg universities, thus covering various moments in the history of the Empire for the widest view. Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918 focuses on the tension between the political and linguistic spaces scholars occupied and shows that this tension did not lead to a gradual dissolution of the monarchy’s academia, but rather to an ongoing development of new strategies to cope with the cultural and linguistic multitude.
of the region stretched between Cracow and L’viv.
The volume proposes a new perspective on the interrelation between the social, political, cultural and economical inequalities in this pluricultural and multireligious region. Although as a part of the Habsburg Empire Galicia was not a “colonial space” in the classic sense, the postcolonial approach enables the historian’s gaze to focus on the relationships between cultures in an imperial setting, opening new perspectives for the study of continental empires in the 19th/20th centuries.
Contents:
Klemens Kaps, Jan Surman
Postcolonial or Post-colonial? Post(-)colonial Perspectives on Habsburg Galicia.....................................7
Franz Leander Fillafer
The “Imperial Idea” and Civilising Missions...........................................................................................37
Christoph Augustynowicz
Blutsaugen als othering oder Reiseerfahrungen aus dem Galizien des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Einige Beobachtungen zu Postkolonialismus und Vampir(ismus)-Diskurs............................................61
Ewa Thompson
Stefan Żeromski’s Ashes as a Postcolonial Narrative..............................................................................77
Klemens Kaps
Kulturelle Differenzen des Ökonomischen: Galizische Entwicklungsdiskurse im Spannungsfeld
räumlicher Funktionalisierung und sozialer Bruchlinien (1772-1848) .................................................97
Danuta Sosnowska
Limitations and Opportunities of Postcolonial Criticism.....................................................................117
Andriy Zayarniuk
Empire, Peasants, National Movements – Galician Postcolonial Triangle? .........................................133
Jan Surman:
Symbolism, Communication and Cultural Hierarchy. Galician Discourses of Language
Hegemony at the Beginning of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.................................................................................................................................................151
Burkhard Wöller
Zivilisierungsmission oder Fremdherrschaft? Die Annexion Rotreußens unter Kasimir III.
im kolonialistischen Diskurs polnischer und ruthenischer Historiker im österreichischen Galizien................................................................................................................................................175
Stefan Simonek
Franko, Mickiewicz, Bahr – Spielarten galizischer Subalternität um 1900..........................................195
Angelique Leszczawski-Schwerk
Juden und Jüdinnen als Postkoloniale Subjekte im Spannungsfeld frauenemanzipatorischer
Bestrebungen (1890 -1914) im österreichischen Galizien ..............................................................213
Dietlind Hüchtker
Rückständigkeit, Fortschritt und Geschichte. Die Rhetorik der
Frauenpolitik am Beispiel Galiziens.....................................................................................................231
Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek, Adam Świątek
The trap of colonialism...The Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia - colonised or colonisers?.......................257
Notes on Authors............................................................................................................................289
habsburskiej Galicji. Do przygotowania tomu zaprosiliśmy Klemensa Kapsa
i Jana Surmana, którzy zakończyli pracę nad nim w 2011 roku.
Autorzy obecnego tomu XLII ― literaturoznawcy, kulturoznawcy, historycy ―
podjęli się trudnego zadania przyjrzenia się historii Galicji z perspektywy badań
postkolonialnych.Proponują nowe ujęcie występujących w tym regionie
społecznych, politycznych, kulturalnych i ekonomicznych form zależności. Chociaż
jako część państwa habsburskiego Galicja nie była "przestrzenią kolonialną"
w klasycznym rozumieniu tego pojęcia, podejście postkolonialne pozwala
historykowi uchwycić relacje pomiędzy zamieszkującymi ją społecznościami
i imperialnym centrum oraz otwiera nowe perspektywy dla badań nad imperiami
europejskimi w XIX i XX stuleciu.
The conversation deals with ways of writing a global history of science and the main methods and concepts needed to do so. Beginning with the questions of non-Eurocentric periodisation, it deals with the issues of sources and key concepts for global historiography like circulation, introduced as a non-dif-fusionist way of looking at the movement of knowledge. Furthermore, issues of go-betweens as actors of bringing different worlds together are discussed.
What are the obstacles for writing histories of science done
beyond metropoles? Is this science different than the science
in the centers and what makes it so? How imperial are sciences
made by representatives of dominant nations compared to nondominant
nations? These are some of the questions touched upon in the interview with Michael Gordin, a leading historian
of science from Princeton University.
science, which was largely in
fl
uenced by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and his team at the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Apart from the discussion of the idea of historical
epistemology, its position among the historical disciplines and implications it has for science
policy, as well as the issues of experiment as basic unit of science are discussed
A Translational Perspective, De Gruyter, Berlin–Boston 2014, ss. 271., PRZEGLĄD KULTUROZNAWCZY, NR 1 (27) 2016, s. 113–119
Recenzja: Understanding Multiculturalism. The Habsburg Central European Experience, red. Johannes Feichtinger, Gary B. Cohen, Berghahn, Oxford–New York, 2014 (Austrian and Habsburg Studies 17), ss. 246.
Podczas gdy koncept wielokulturowości był w ostatnim czasie obiektem mocnej krytyki, szczególnie ze strony polityki, recenzowana książka obiera inną pozycję, analizując i historyzując go. Spoglądając na Europe Środkową z użyciem nieesecjalizujących czy postkolonialnych koncepcji, autorzy proponują nie tylko nowe sposoby odczytania historii regionu, lecz także nowe kategorie dla przyszłych badań historii kulturowej.
Презентер: др. Ян Сурман
Диспутант: др. Василь Расевич
22 жовтня 2013 р.
Центр міської історії, Львів (Україна)
Prezentacja dr Jana Surmana pt. "Kolonialne odczytanie Galicji" oraz dyskusja wokół tomu "Galicja postkolonialna: możliwości i granice" (pod red. J. Surmana i K. Kapsa). Dyskusję poprowadził dr Wasyl Rasewycz.
22 października 2013
Centrum Historii Miejskiej, Lwów (Ukraina)
Presentation of the Publication "Postcolonial Galicia: Prospects and Possibilities" and the Discussion about Postcolonial Studies
Speaker: dr. Jan Surman
Disputant: dr. Vasyl Rasevych
October 22, 2013
Center for Urban History, Lviv (Ukraine)
Please send us short proposals (up to 300 words) by 28 February 2019 along with a CV or a link to your online CV. The organisers will seek to reimburse expenditures for travel and accommodation. Please indicate in your application if you would need reimbursement
International Workshop organized by Friedrich Cain, Dietlind Hüchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg, and Jan Surman
Erfurt, Germany, 24./25. November 2017
The first half of the 20th century was an age of global accelerated social and political transformation, at the time and afterwards conceived as either evolution, revolution, or reform. While the entity of Eastern, Middle-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe was heterogeneous, it was home to a number of parallel processes inducing what seem to be similar epistemologies, varying only in local forms. To localize these variations, our workshop focuses on reflections on science, scholarship and higher education done in this region from the end of WWI until the 1960s.
The scholars we want to focus on were not only “scientists of science”, but often analyzed and even heavily influenced political and social change from their specific standpoints, ranging from philosophy, history, sociology, psychology to especially pedagogy. However, most of them positioned their projects at transdisciplinary junctures. They were eager to introduce brand new sciences or at least to fundamentally reshape existing disciplines. Many politically engaged scholars suggested and helped to implement programs to investigate science, thought or creativity in order to foster individual, social or national progress. We understand such projects as political epistemologies – theories of knowledge, that are preconditioned by political convictions. In times of national and cultural plurality – either multiplication or fragmentation – these theories often emphasized a plurality of knowledge.
Our workshop aims to investigate such political epistemologies in their respective academic, regional or national embedding. The workshop has two main interests: First, to uncover the panorama of contributors that goes beyond such prominent figures like Alfred Tarski or Ludwik Fleck in Warsaw and Lviv, Jan Patočka and Emmanuel Rádl in Prague, Boris Hessen and Aleksander Bogdanov in Moscow and St. Petersburg or Karl Mannheim and Michael Polanyi, both born and socialized in Budapest. For this we particularly encourage contributions on persons and places hitherto marginalized in recent research. Second, we want to investigate different theoretical concepts and practical methods that originated in the region and uncover biographies of these concepts and methods, whether local or transnational.
The workshop is envisioned as a first of a series of meetings on (Eastern) European Epistemologies and is meant to open up the discussion on the shape of the respective workshops as well as their possible geographical, topical and personal scope.
In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been drawn to interdisciplinary research between the fields of Translation Studies and History of Science, which has shed light on, for instance, the workings of scientific communities, the dissemination of knowledge across languages and cultures, and the transformation in the process of that knowledge and of the scientific communities involved. Translators are brought to the fore, and if they were once treated as anecdotal actors in scientific exchanges, they are now understood as key agents. The Translation in Science, Science in Translation conference precisely engages in all these questions suggested by the conversation between Translation Studies and History of Science, and understands language as a complex phenomenon that includes dialects, sociolects and disciplinary tongues, and science as encompassing the natural and the social sciences. The focus is from early modernity to the present, and the conference’s translational perspective also applies to movements across disciplines, and to communication between scholars and lays.
Date: 8-9 December 2016 // Location: Lecture Hall, Gisonenweg 5-7, 35037 Marburg
In arguments about the current refugee crisis, East European heads of state have repeatedly claimed that their countries have never been perceived as desirable destinations; therefore, they shall never be such. We would like to take the occasion of the 2016 Annual Convention of the Leibniz Graduate School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe to investigate this claim. “The Knowledge Factor” offers an opportunity to discuss the history of refugees in, not from, Eastern Europe and the role knowledge inherent to or associated with refugees has played in the interaction with host societies. The focus lies on the twentieth century from the Balkan Wars of 1912 until its ultimate end in 2001.
Keynote: Ilse Lazaroms: „Origins Revisited: The Lost Landscapes of Joseph Roth’s Eastern Europe“
In einer Reihe von Texten zur Rolle des Übersetzens, wie „Was ist eine ‚relevante‘ Übersetzung?“ (2001), beschrieb Derrida den Prozess der Translation als eine dekonstruktive Transformation, die Differenzen erzeugt. Der Workshop „Derrida übersetzen“ fügt dieser Theorie der Translation in Bezug auf die Übersetzung der Schriften des französischen Philosophen eine praxeologische Perspektive in zweifacher Hinsicht hinzu: Erstens werden mit den eingeladenen Gästen ihre Übersetzungen diskutiert. Wir fragen danach, wie kontext- und zeitgebunden die Übersetzungen auf der Sprach- und Konzeptebene sind bzw. wie die ÜbersetzerInnen und PhilosophInnen ihre Translationspraxis wahrnehmen und reflektieren. Zweitens wird gefragt, welche Gründe die ÜbersetzerInnen Derridas in den 1970er-Jahren und in der Gegenwart zu den deutschsprachigen Übersetzungen bewogen. Der Workshop entwickelt eine Perspektive auf Übersetzungen als konkrete Interventionen, Irritationen, Inskriptionen und produktive Transformationen in ihren jeweiligen sprachlichen, philosophischen und politischen Kontexten und schließlich in Bezug auf Derridas eigenes Denken.
17.11.2016: 09:30 - 18:30 Uhr
KONZEPTION: Jan Surman (Marburg), Monika Wulz (Zürich)
TEILNEHMERINNEN: Peter Engelmann (Wien), Rodolphe Gasché (Buffalo), Ludwig Jäger (Aachen/Köln), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin), Esther von der Osten (Berlin), Markus Sedlaczek (München), Jan Surman (Marburg), Michael Wetzel (Bonn), Monika Wulz (Zürich)
Als Grundlage des Roundtable I dient der Text "Insister. Á Jacques Derrida", Paris: Galilée 2006, von
Hélène Cixous. Dieser Text kann auf Anfrage an Interessierte versandt werden (losenicky@ifk.ac.at).
International Conference “Translation in Science, Science in Translation”
30-31 March 2017, Justus Liebig University Giessen
Deadline for applications: 31 July 2016
Invited speakers:
Dr Doris Bachmann-Medick (Giessen), Dr Maeve Olohan (Manchester), Dr Benedikt Perak (Rijeka)
Organization
The conference is organized by Katharina Kühn (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, University of Giessen), Dr Rocío G. Sumillera (Universidad de Granada), and Dr Jan Surman (Herder Institute, Marburg), in collaboration with the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), the Giessen Graduate School for Humanities (GGK), the Giessen Centre for East European Studies (GiZo), the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association, the Department for Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, and the University of Granada.
Europe”
Do-it-Yourself! Subversive practices and informal knowledge
19-20 November 2015
Venue: The Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe –
Institute of the Leibniz Association, Gisonenweg 5-7, 35037 Marburg
Organizers: Sarah Czerney, Jan Surman, Ina Alber
It has long been established that Central Europe was not a classic colonial space but deserves to be analyzed using tools developed by postcolonial thinkers. In this paper I will continue deliberations started in 2012 with Postcolonial Galicia as to which postcolonialism is suitable for Habsburg and post-Habsburg space. I argue that postcolonial tools and categories do more harm than good when used uncritically for entangled spaces such as continental empires, where categories of othering were fluid and mostly still composed in the nationalist discourse. Furthermore, discourse of othering was consciously applied by national activists to achieve their particularist aims such as reduction of multilinguality and nationalist civilizing missions. This process was not (only) anti-imperial, but at the same time imperial since it created new dependencies and internal colonialisms. Moreover, categories developed during the imperial period continued to haunt Central Europe long after, presenting themselves in cultural paternalism through “civilizing missions” (e.g. in Interwar Eastern Poland) up to post-1989 cultural cleavages.
Fluid transitions between hegemonic and subaltern and the consequences thereof are but one of several aspects which can be highlighted through application of postcolonial approach. In my talk I will sketch out several of them, with emphasis on the production of “us” and “them” categories around 1900 and the ways they outlived the empire. I will look at both the West and the East of the Empire trying to overcome the post-imperial national narrative and argue that albeit multilingual, Habsburg period much less multicultural than post-imperial writings made it.