Theo Jung

Last week, on December 15th, I had my Ph.D. exam (‘Disputation’). After a short presentation, a wide range of questions was posed to me by my supervisors (Prof. Steinmetz of the University of Bielefeld and Prof. Den Boer of the University of Amsterdam) and the other members of the committee (Prof. Papenheim and Prof. Epple). Some of the issues we spoke about were:

– is cultural criticism political or unpolitical in nature?

– is cultural criticism mainly a transnational, Western-European discourse? What role is played by national or language specific differences?

– should the discourse of cultural criticism be interpreted as the linguistic form of a particular social group? How should its intperpretation as ‘instrument’ in the hands of language users be weighed against its semantical properties that may – at least in part unconsciously – influence the actors understanding of themselves and the world?

The results were very satisfying (summa cum laude).