Research Programme

The goal of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation is to develop a transmedial theory of the practices and processes of cultural reparation from a historical and transcultural perspective in order to better understand cultural practices of reparation in a sociopolitical context. When the subject of reparations is addressed from the standpoint of international law, economics, political science, sociology or technology, the focus is primarily on material aspects of reparation. At the Käte Hamburger Centre in Saarbrücken, in contrast, research will concentrate on the role of the cultural practices in which reparative processes are negotiated, made tangible and reflected upon. The cultural practices to be examined range from literature, film and theatre to music videos and TV series, (digital) art forms and exhibitions, (language) rituals and styles of public discourse.

The Käte Hamburger Centre aims to answer the following questions:

  • What is reparation?
  • What is the relationship between reparations and the problem of irreparability?
  • How are reparations negotiated in cultural practices?
  • How do the processes of cultural reparation alter perceptions of the world, influence self-conceptions and self-representations and change ways of life?

Research areas

The Käte Hamburger Centre will examine these questions in three main thematic areas: history, experience, nature/culture

History

The focus here will be on cultures of remembrance and on historical-political discourse concerning imperialism, genocide and world wars, and on mediating between different narratives of victimhood.

 

Experience

The field of experience will be devoted to individual experiences of loss and harm, including alienation, humiliation, injury and trauma. It is also the area in which the emergence of new forms of subjectivity and communality will be examined and discussed.

 

Nature/Culture

This area will deal with the cultural significance of environmental questions (the Anthropocene, climate change, different concepts and understandings of what „nature“ is), focusing particularly on a critical examination of humanity's relationship with a world shaped by technology and industrialization and with the non-human natural environment.

 

Academic work programme

During the first phase of funding, the focus of the academic work programme will be on the forces and spheres of impact of cultural reparations. This initial phase is divided into four annual themes, which are addressed and explored by the visiting fellows in the areas of history, experience and nature/culture:

  1. Theory (2024/2025)
  2. Society (2025/2026)
  3. Bodies (2026/2027)
  4. Things (2027/2028)

Publications

  • Markus Messling and Christiane Solte-Gresser: Qu’est-ce qu’une pratique culturelle de réparation ? La réstitution de la stèle d‘Axum et le récit  ‘L‘icona’ d‘Igiaba Scego, in: Mario Laarmann, Clément Ndé Fongang, Carla Seemann, Laura Vordermayer (Ed.): Reparation, Restitution, and the Politics of Memory. Perspectives from Literary, Historical, and Cultural Studies / Réparation, restitution et les politiques de la mémoire. Perspectives littéraires, historiques et culturelles, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023, 33-61 (free open access, DOI: 10.1515/9783110799514-003)
  • Markus Messling: Champollion devant l’universalisme républicain, in: La Vie des idées (Collège de France), 27 septembre 2022.
  • Markus Messling: Universality after Universalism. On Francophone Literatures of the Present, transl. Michael T. Taylor, foreword by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023 (forthcoming)
  • Rhinozeros. Europa im Übergang. Band 1 | reparieren. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2021. (Ed. Priya Basil, Franck Hofmann, Teresa Koloma Beck and Markus Messling).
  • Christiane Solte-Gresser: Lebens-Welt-Verlust? Literarische Formen postmoderner Welterzeugung am Beispiel von Marlene Streeruwitz, in: Christian Moser and Linda Simonis (Ed.): Figuren des Globalen. Weltbezug und Welterzeugung in Literatur, Kunst und Medien, Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2014 (= Global Poetics 1), 413-424.
  • Christiane Solte-Gresser: Shoah-Träume. Vergleichende Studien zum Traum als Erzählverfahren, Paderborn: Fink, 2021 (= Traum – Wissen – Erzählen 10).

 

Contact

khk(at)uni-saarland.de

 

Directors
Prof. Dr. Markus Messling: markus.messling(at)uni-saarland.de
Prof. Dr. Christiane Solte-Gresser: solte(at)mx.uni-saarland.de

Photo credits (Header)

Mona Kriegler, The Scar (Bagdad’s Al-Mutanabbi Street). From the series Pain and Memory. Sketches Malwina Naskret, photography Dafne Louzioti. © 2012/13 Mona Kriegler