Welcome to Research Unit "Ambiguity and Distinction. Historical and Cultural Dynamics."
Zeitschrift für Religions- und GeistesgeschichteRecently published: Frank Becker, Zur Ambiguität von Religion und Politik in Deutschland: Die Evangelische Kirche in der NS-Zeit
Frank Becker, Zur Ambiguität von Religion und Politik in Deutschland: Die Evangelische Kirche in der NS-Zeit, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 74.3 (2022), 232-250, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700739-07403004
During the Nazi era, the Protestant Church in Germany was challenged by the so-called church struggle between the German Christian Movement and the Confessing Church. This article interprets the church struggle in a new way by taking up concepts from Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theory and ambiguity research. It becomes clear that the church struggle was ultimately about the fundamental problem of the relationship between the religious and political system.
UNIKATE 58Recently published: UNIKATE 58: Uneindeutigkeit und kultureller Wandel
In this issue of UNIKATE, the subprojects of the research unit present themselves and explain their perspectives on phenomena of ambiguity. The issue is accessible online and the contributions can be downloaded there.
We hope you enjoy reading it!
Open Access PublikationRecently published: Jan C. Jansen, Aliens in a Revolutionary World
Jan C. Jansen, Aliens in a Revolutionary World: Refugees, Migration Control and Subjecthood in the British Atlantic, 1790s-1820s, in: Past & Present 255.1 (2022), 189–231, Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtab02
During the political and military upheavals between the 1770s and 1820s, societies and states across the Atlantic world grappled with intricate issues of political belonging and sovereignty. Along with the rise of new concepts of national citizenship, older concepts of monarchical or imperial subjecthood underwent fundamental changes. While scholars tend to ascribe these transformations to revolutionary innovation, the movement of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing revolutions and violent conflict was no less important in reshaping the terms of political membership. In response to these migrations, national and colonial governments passed legislation meant to control the mobility of foreign refugees. Based on the case of three men of colour, the sons of Haitian refugees, deported from Jamaica in 1823, this article explores the wider impact the regulation of alien status had. The 1823 incident set off a major legal battle and a sprawling debate about the terms of membership in the transforming British Empire. The affair raised fundamental questions about the status and rights of foreigners, the definition of who was a subject of the British Crown, and about how sovereignty was to be conceived in a period of continuous territorial transfers and military occupations.
Conference September 2021Sharpening Ambiguities. A Concept and its Neighborhoods
From September 22 to 24, 2021, the international conference "Sharpening Ambiguity. A Concept and its Neighborhoods" took place. The event aimed at a clarifcation of the concept of ambiguity by contrasting it with neighboring concepts such as indifference, ambiguity, and the figure of the third.
Program and video recordings of the lectures can be found here.
