Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion X:		Mehrsprachigkeit: Regionen, "Nationen", Multikulturalität, Interkulturalität, Transkulturalität
Section X:		Multilingualism: Regions, "Nations", Multiculturalism, Interculturalism and Transculturalism
Section X:		Plurilinguisme: régions, "nations", multiculturalité, interculturalité, transculturalité

Naoji Kimura (Tokio)

German

Cultural Studies in Difficulties

With regard to the German figures that Thomas Mann chose as teachers and leaders, he said in an address at Oxford: Goethe and Democracy (1949): "It it is nothing less than chance that ... these, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner and in later years, Goethe in the first place, all bear a strongly supra-German, European stamp."(1) What he found in them, was the European, and he emphasizes a "European Germany" in contrast to a "German Europe". The first appears to bode no good for Europe, while the latter counts as the "good Germany" for him. Apart from the first three figures named, whose European character could certainly not shared by all, Goethe may perhaps, since the secular celebrations of 1932, be undisputed as the good European, because he was without doubt, a supra-German phenomenon and that concept of world literature to which he lent his stamp was especially understood as European literature.(2) But is was also Goethe who, in his Wilhelm Meister novel, was one of the first German poets to take up the theme of America.

The European in the tension of its relationship with Germany for this reason, refers in the first instance to democracy, because from the Anglo-American perspective, Thomas Mann condemns surely not the German national state, but erstwhile German nationalism. So-called Europe, has in fact changed much in the course of the 20th century, and especially from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall it had actually been split into two camps by the Iron Curtain: The Western Bloc versus the Eastern Bloc, Christianity versus Atheism, Liberalism versus Socialism, Caplitalism versus Communism, NATO versus the Warsaw Pact etc.. But this was a general impression of Europe among the post-war generation throughout the world, as long as the state boundary between West and East Germany was fixed like a thorn in the flesh of continental Europe. In Hans Magnus Enzensbergers volume of essays Ach Europa! (1987), in which European unity is still called "a chimera", two chapters about Hungary as well as Poland are certainly to be found, and at the conclusion of the book, fantasy is briefly touched on by mention of Prague as "Bohemia at the sea"(3), but there was as yet no chapter about Russia which clearly belongs to the old Europe with cities such as St. Petersburg or Moscow. The reduction of the concept of Europe to that of power politics appears, therefore, to have placed European identity in danger to a great extent.

Since this politically determined opposition had come to an end in November 1989, the old triadic structure of Western, Central and Eastern Europe appeared again, which had long been lying hiding or been concealed on the stage of European history since the war. With this, on the one hand the unmentioned old Prussia beyond the Elbe was raised more or less anew into public consciousness, and on the other hand, the once vanished cultural tradition of the Danubian Habsburg monarchy came to the fore with the old national differences as in the case of the former Yugoslavia. In addition, if one brings the successor states of the Soviet Union into consideration, so the concept of Europe expands, grows continually larger, more complicated and thus also more problematic. Because the boundaries with the different Asia are becoming more indistinct, geographically, as well as culturally, until one finally arrives, via China and Korea to highly technically developed Japan which, in spite of its ancient Shinto culture, is almost European in appearance, in the farthest Far East(4). It is a cultural process that goes beyond the attempt of a European integration in the sense of the rediscovery of a European identity.

In the meantime, however, the idea of European integration that was originally held by the Western European countries on the Rhine against the Eastern Bloc, developed from the European Economic Community, via the European Community to the European Union. The European Union, it is true, has only been in existence since the Maastricht treaty on 1.11.1993, but brought together in the European Union are three associations EEC, EURATOM EGKS which all came into being before the new dispensation in Germany. It is self evident that the EU sees itself faced with the task of appropriately changing its own ideas of integration in the face of the surprisingly new situation in Europe. Europe was primarily a cultural-historical concept before it was altered into an economically directed community. Through this, problems arise that can't simply be solved by economics, law or political science. Otherwise one wouldn't throw up a question like "Cultural Studies and Europe". The question as such shows itself to be indicative of a situation of crisis. When literary research threatened onesidedly to end up in a dead-end-street if the history of achievement after the war, Heinz Kindermann underscored the other hemisphere of the history of influence and also pointed to Cultural Studies: "Just their mere inclusion would allow literary and theatre scholarship to become real life studies, Cultural Studies of the eternally vital, of the continual mutability of the shaping of human existence."(5)

When exactly 200 years ago, Novalis wrote his essay Die Christenheit oder Europa (Christendom and Europe) - the title did not come from him - things were different. With him aim of regenerating Europe, he entertained thoughts 1)of an internalized and simultaneously generalized understanding of religion, 2) of a deepened understanding of history as a gospel and 3) of poetry as "Art Religion" (Gerhard Schulz)(6). These thoughts are prominent through the spirit of German Romanticism in the 18th century and cannot be used just like that for the Europe of today which isn't identical with the so-called Christian Occident any more. But the serial order of religion, history and culture in the sense of the generalization of poetry appears to be very meaningful because the retrogressive "tendency" is to be observed in the present. It is time, in the age of a-historical technical progress to return to the future-oriented cultural tradition. Goethe wrote in his Maximen und Reflexionen (Maxims and Reflexions): "That which is original about us will be best preserved and praised, if we do not lose sight of our antecendents"(7). But it is just as certain that the European culture striven for through integration alone can exist no more in the 21st century. A world culture with a technical stamp is already arising.

That in the EU in the beginning not cultural processes but economic interest stood in the foreground is obvious in the composition of the European Community. With its aim of introducing the Euro as the common currency in the EU states, European integration, at least in the economic sector should be striven toward, in this it must be supported by means of political co-operation with the USA and the military co-operation of NATO. The national culture, which in the wake of this, had retreated into the background through a certain "Americanization" should naturally continue to be practised as the foundation of European nations. But as in America itself, culture is indeed characterized by diversity, its essential carrier is the language that shows itself to be so different according to time and place. Cultural Studies may, therefore, have its greatest task here, firstly, to solve by mediation, the conflicting interests between the common market economy as a whole and the individual national cultures in Europe and then, if possible, to restore the precedence of culture over economics.

Over and above this, in my opinion, Cultural Studies has to come to terms with a fundamental aporia. It concerns Europe as a geographical, historical and socio-cultural concept in one. On the earth there are actually only five continents: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America and Australia. In spite of that, for centuries, Eurasia has been divided into two great land masses, namely Europe and Asia, although Europe represents only a deeply differentiated western archipelago of Asia. Through this, Eurasia was in fact divided by three into the parts of the earth: Europe, near East, and Far East, which each respectively underwent an individual historical development and whose great distances from each other would only be overcome by technical means in the 20th century. In this sharply cordoned off Europe, Christianity played a decisive role until modern times, even if it was never uniform. Since the Reformation, Europe is religiously deeply fragmented, as is well-known. In the 18th century, Christianity was nevertheless so powerful throughout Europe that one could still speak of Europe as Christendom. One such as Friedrich Schlegel could also edit a journal with the title Europa.

But in the European Union, Christianity no longer plays such an important role any more and, from this again, different problems result for Cultural Studies, because all over the world culture had been produced in the closest relationship with religion. The so-called Information Society, which has come about especially through the invention of the Internet, has indeed brought Globalization/Internationalization with it. But it may not conceal that with all the technical uniformity of East and West, there are great cultural differences, above all language barriers between Europe and Asia. Homogenization of ethnic groups doesn't come about through mass communication when not accompanied by the preparedness to mutually respect one another. While in the East the Great Wall of China existed for military purposes, at the edge of the Christian Occident, an invisible wall of the civitas Dei was erected, from where symbolically enough, the narrow Silk Route to the Far East with Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism threaded through, but which, in the course of history was buried in the desert or as a result of the Crusades, was blocked by Islam.

Another problem appears to be the danger of a quasi European nationalism when the EU presents itself in a certain sense as the United States of Europe with its star-studded blue flag. the nationalism that arose in Europe in the 19th century, where there were supposed to be more than two dozen sovereign nation states, surely came to an end through both disastrous world wars, as Japanese militarism was destroyed by the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is, however, to be feared that the Euro is conceived not so much as a common currency union for the European economy, but rather more consciously as an effective means of currency against the US Dollar and to a lesser extent, against the Japanese Yen, too. Even though it was fiction from the year 2008, Enzensberger allowed the Finns to openly say in conversation with the American journalist: "The so-called Idea of Europe was effectively intended to set a large bloc against the large blocs."(8) With this, above all, one doesn't want to vegetate way as a white Japanese". They thus speak openly in commerce about a trade war, in which in spite of the best intentions for peaceful co-existence, is sometimes more toughly contested than one fights in sport. It almost concerns the battle for existence in a socio-Darwinist sense, which idea caused so much disaster in the philosophy of life and "Realpolitik". To set up ethical principles against this, would also be an urgent task for Cultural Studies.

It is finally culture that humanizes the trade war in the technical age. Instead of Christianity that being as disunited as it is, can never become the religion of the whole of humanity, there is a need in the 21st century for a confessionally free religion of humanity, that in the age of mass communication must be differently regulated and designed than in the German classical period of a Goethe or Schiller. because this is still too European and aesthetically oriented, as Goethe once explained in his Maximen und Reflexionen: "Chinese, Indian, Egyptian works of antiquity are always only curiosities; it is well to acquaint oneself and the world with them; but for cultural and aesthetic education, they will be of little benefit to us."(9) In the religion of general humanity, which should fittingly include the moral heights of Buddhism or Confucianism, one would have to take preventative measures especially in Europe so that no language war arises between the different peoples in Europe or even within a language area in Europe. The problems of minorities connected with this are also still topical, as e.g. with the Basques, with Ireland or Transsylvania. The preventative measures will, however, be expensive and have a burdensome effect on the European economy because, in the EU, much more than at present would have to be translated. Then, like Enzensberger, one asks after the meaning of a national cultural institute and makes the suggestion of perhaps establishing a European Cultural House in its place.(10)

On the European continent, there are in any case the two fundamental opposites of Europe and Asia and in Europe alone there are already so many different languages, regions and nations to be found. In the light of thus geographic cultural diversity, one can speak of multiculturalism with justification. But multiculturalism in Asia should also be taken just as seriously by European Cultural Studies as is the case vice-versa in the Asiatic countries, if mutual understanding between the peoples is really meant. Interculturalism today can be achieved with apparent ease through the Internet. But multilingualism of English, French, German or Spanish spreads itself from Europe not so easily to encompass Hebrew, Arabic or Indian, as far as Chinese, Korean or Japanese, and transculturalism shows itself to be extremely difficult in translation(11). That looks like disharmony in the harmony in the great orchestra of humanity, where Cultural Studies is caught in difficulties between Europe and Asia, as once between culture and civilization, because nobody is able to have thorough command of so many languages of the East and the West. If one wants to consider African Studies, American Studies, Iberian Romance Studies and Oceanic Studies over and above this, one can almost fall into a faint.

NOTES

1	Thomas Mann, Goethe's Laufbahn als Schriftsteller. Zwölf Essays und Reden zu Goethe. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a.M. 1982, P. 285.
2	cf. Documentation of the Goethe Institut, Munich on the Symposium "Weltliteratur" (World Literature) that took place in March 1997 in Weimar.
3	Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Ach Europa! Wahrnehmungen aus sieben Ländern. Mit einem Epilog aus dem Jahr 2008. Frankfurt am M 1987. here pp. 2942. The Japanese translation appeared an 20 October,1989, therefore, immediately before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and on the cover of the book the integration of Europe was depicted as an illusion.
4	For more details cf. Naoji Kimura: Japan - the Europe of the Far East? INST-Internet-Exhibition "Kulturwissenschaften und Europa" (Cultural Studies and Europe). Cultural Collaboratory (www.inst.at/ausstellung/kimura.htm).
5	Heinz Kindermann: Das Goethebild des 20. Jahrhunderts. 2. Edition, Darmstadt, 1966. p.10.
6	Novalis Werke Edited and commented by Gerhard Schulz. 2. Edition. Munich.1981.p.799.
7	Goethe Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Vol.12. p.505.
8	H.M. Enzensberger.op.cit. p.481.
9	op.cit.
10	cf. Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Schluß mit den nationalen Kulturinstituten! Das Europa-Haus: Eine Architektur-Skizze. In: www.sbg.at/ger/gig/enzensb.htm.
11	cf. Peter Pförtner: Aneignung durch Enteignung, ein japanischer Weg.Flankiernde Notizen zum Fremdenverständnis, zur japaischen Literaturwissenschaft und zum Übersetzungsproblem. In: Wie international ist die Literaturwissenschaft? Methoden-und Theoriediskussion in den Literaturwissenschaften: kulturelle Besonderheiten und interkultureller Austausch am Beispiel des Interpretationsproblems (1950-1990). Ed. Lutz Danneberg and Friedrich Vollhardt. Stuttgart/Weimar, 1996. pp.478-491.

		Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion X:		Mehrsprachigkeit: Regionen, "Nationen", Multikulturalität, Interkulturalität, Transkulturalität
Section X:		Multilingualism: Regions, "Nations", Multiculturalism, Interculturalism and Transculturalism
Section X:		Plurilinguisme: régions, "nations", multiculturalité, interculturalité, transculturalité