Posted in Publications, tagged France, Great Britain, Henk te Velde, Nineteenth Century, Review, Rhetoric on December 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »
The recent issue of the Dutch journal De Negentiende Eeuw published my review of Henk te Veldes new study
Sprekende politiek: Redenaars en hun publiek in de parlementaire gouden eeuw
[Speaking Politics: Orators and their Audience in the Golden Age of Parliamentarism]
The book, which analyses the history of parliamentary rhetoric in Great Britain and France throughout the ‘long’ nineteenth century, comes highly recommened, both to scholars of the period and to a wider public.
Posted in Publications on August 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
On the H-Soz-Kult platform, I have published a review of Alain Corbin’s Histoire du silence. De la Renaissance à nos jours.
Alain Corbin: Histoire du silence. De la Renaissance
à nos jours, Paris 2016.
The book presents a wide ranging overview over the changing meanings and uses of silence in Western culture from the Renaisance to the present day. Alongside its historical analysis, it presents a case for the reappraisal of silence as a space of self-knowledge which – as the author argues – has too often been lost in the modern world of “hypermédiatisation” (p. 11).
The review may be found here.
Posted in Publications, tagged Clio Online, Digital Humanities, History, Nineteenth Century, Publication on April 20, 2016| 1 Comment »
After some delay, a research guide written by my colleagues and me at the chair of Western European History at Freiburg University has been published on the Clio-Online platform.
Theo Jung / Sonja Levsen / Sabine Mischner / Friedemann Pestel / Christina Schröer, Das lange 19. Jahrhundert, in: Clio Guide – Ein Handbuch zu digitalen Ressourcen für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Hrsg. von Laura Busse, Wilfried Enderle, Rüdiger Hohls, Gregor Horstkemper, Thomas Meyer, Jens Prellwitz, Annette Schuhmann, Berlin 2016 (=Historisches Forum, Bd. 19), http://www.clio-online.de/guides/epochen/das-lange-neunzehnte-jahrhundert/2016.
In it, we present a broad overview over the digital resources presently available to historians of the ‘long’ nineteenth century, ranging from search catalogues and source databases to institutional frameworks and communication platforms. It aims to ‘guide’ the student and scholar through this new field of expertise as well as provide a critical evaluation of the possibilities and pitfalls opened up by the availability of these new gateways to information and source materials.
Posted in Publications, tagged Counter-Enlightenment, Eighteenth Century, Enlightenment, Martin L. Davies, Publication, Routledge on April 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
The volume Thinking about the Enlightenment: Modernity and its Ramifications, edited by Martin L. Davies of Leicester University has now been published by Routledge.
My chapter,
Multiple Counter-Enlightenments: The Genealogy of a Polemics from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
the penultimate in a very diverse series of perspectives on the various dimensions of the relationship between Enlightenment and the present, takes up the issue of counter-enlightenment(s). It asks how various criticisms of ‘the’ Enlightenment gradually came to be viewed as constituting a singular tradition of thought, constitutive of Western reflection upon or own place in history.
[Edit: The text is now available online here.]
Thinking about the Enlightenment looks beyond the current parameters of studying the Enlightenment, to the issues that can be understood by reflecting on the period in a broader context. Each of the thirteen original chapters, by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, illustrates the problematic legacy of the Enlightenment and the continued ramifications of its thinking to consider whether modernity can see its roots in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Drawing from history, philosophy, literature and anthropology, this book enables students and academics alike to take a fresh look at the Enlightenment and its legacy.
Posted in Publications, tagged Article, Cultural Criticism, Heidelberg, History, Temporalization on April 3, 2016| 1 Comment »
The proceedings of a conference I attended two years ago in Heidelberg have been published as volume 18 in the series Schriften zur politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik by Peter Lang.
My own contribution, titled
Eine “Klage, die so alt ist, als die Geschichte”? Dimensionen des Wandels im Diskurs der modernen Kulturkritik
(A “Complaint as old as History itself”? Dimensions of Change in the Discourse of Modern Cultural Criticism)
develops an analytical model to describe four dimensions of change in the modern discourse of cultural criticism since the late eighteenth century.
[EDIT: the text is now available online here.]
Click here for the volume’s contents, a short introductory text, part of the introduction and the publisher’s page.
Posted in Publications, tagged Diderot, Eighteenth Century, Exotism, France, Nature, Power, Sexuality, Tahiti on October 12, 2015| 1 Comment »
The conference proceedings of a workshop I participated in two years ago have now been published under the title:
Denis Diderot und die Macht / Denis Diderot et le pouvoir
My own contribution considers Diderot’s discussion of power, sexuality and colonial rule in the Supplément au voyage de Bougainville and is titled
Stimmen der Natur. Diderot, Tahiti und der homme naturel
Voices of Nature. Diderot, Tahiti and the homme naturel
Summary (in German):
Im Supplément au voyage de Bougainville setzt sich Diderot am Beispiel Tahitis mit Fragen der Macht, der Sexualität und der Kolonialherrschaft auseinander. Der Text gilt als Paradebeispiel für die exotistische Verklärung eines fremden Naturvolkes als Kontrastbild zur Verkommenheit abendländischer Zivilisation. Und tatsächlich gibt es Stimmen im Text, die einer solchen Idealisierung und einem ‚Zurück zur Natur’ das Wort reden. Aber es gibt auch andere. Erst die Auflösung der Stimmenvielfalt des Textes zugunsten der Identifikation einer eindeutigen Grundaussage lässt bestimmte Äußerungen im Text als Elemente einer systematischen ‚Naturtheorie‘ Diderots erscheinen. Jedoch muss eine solche Lesart nicht nur eine konstitutive Ebene des Textes – seine multiperspektivische Form – außer Acht lassen, sie verstrickt sich auch auf inhaltlicher Ebene in Widersprüche. In diesem Beitrag wird versucht, die verschiedenen Positionen im Text in ihrem Zusammenhang zu betrachten. Aus diesem Blickwinkel zeigt sich, dass Diderot sich keineswegs als autoritatives Sprachrohr der Natur aufführt. Im Gegenteil. Indem er die Vielfalt der Stimmen, die sich auf die ‚natürliche’ Ordnung als Legitimitätsbasis ihrer jeweiligen Autorität beziehen, miteinander kontrastiert, zeigt er performativ, was es heißt, sich auf die Veränderlichkeit der Natur einzulassen, ohne den Anspruch zu erheben, sie ein für alle Mal festlegen zu können.
I’m very grateful to the volume’s editor, PD Dr. Isabelle Deflers and the team at the Frankreichzentrum (Center for French Studies) of Freiburg University for making this publication possible.
Edit: A digital file of the article has now been made available here.
Posted in Publications, tagged Als het verleden trekt, Herman Paul, History, Publication, Review, Theory of History on September 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »
A short review I wrote about Herman Paul’s new introduction to the philosophy of history has been published on the website of the International Network for Theory of History. The book, which offers an overview over the theoretical foundations of the historical discipline to Dutch students, comes highly recommended. The review (in English) can be found here.
Posted in Publications, tagged Article, Concept, Historical Semantics, Nineteenth Century, Temporalization, Zeitgeist on July 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
An article I wrote for the Contributions to the History of Concepts has been published in volume 9, number 1 of this journal.
The article traces the uses of the concept of zeitgeist in early nineteenth-century European political discourse. To explain the concept’s explosive takeoff in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two perspectives are combined. On the one hand, the concept is shown to be a key element in the new, “temporalized” discourses of cultural reflection emerging during this time. On the other, its pragmatic value as a linguistic tool in concrete political constellations is outlined on the basis of case studies from French, British and German political discourse. Developing this two-sided perspective, the article sheds light on an important aspect of early nineteenth-century political discourse while also pointing to some general considerations concering the relationship between semantic and pragmatic analyses of historical language use.
Posted in Publications, tagged Counter-Enlightenment, Eighteenth Century, Enlightenment, Historical Semantics, Nineteenth Century, Publication, Reinhart Koselleck, Temporalization, Time, Zeitgeist on February 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Some of my writing has been made available online through the Freidoks server at Freiburg University.
Posted in Publications, tagged Article, Eighteenth Century, Lorenz Hübner, Luxury, Publication on July 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »
A short article I wrote about luxury debates at the end of the eighteenth century has been published in the Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie.
In essence, the article provides a commentary on and contextualization of a text published in 1776 by Lorenz Hübner (1751-1807) titled Abhandlung von dem Luxus, oder schädlichem Prachte, which is also reprinted in the Zeitschrift. Hübners text – originally a speech in honor of the bavarian elector Maximilian III. Joseph – provides an interesting insight into the history and development of eighteenth century luxury debates. 
Theo Jung 