Repräsentation und Augenschein. Organisation des Wissens und Wahrnehmung des Fremden um 1800 am Beispiel der Reiseberichte und -tagebücher Alexander von Humboldts

• Main Author: Eva-Maria Siegel
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Universität Potsdam 2003-10-01
• Series: HiN - Alexander von Humboldt im Netz. Internationale Zeitschrift für Humboldt-Studien
• Subjects: Alexander von Humboldt; Eva-Maria Siegel; Georg Foster; Relation historique; Diary; 1800
• Online Access: http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/romanistik/humboldt/hin/hin7/siegel.htm

Article in German, Abstracts in English, German and FrenchIn modern times the instrumental reason is meant to be a condition for objectivity and rationality. Referring to this consideration the lecture turns to the question, in which way the instrumental reason impresses upon the encounter with the foreign around 1800 and on which organizational forms of knowledge it is based. How do the representations of European stores of knowledge shape that global reference framework, in which the travel reports and diaries of Alexander von Humboldt are today?The thesis is, that his recordings about the conquest of the New World place the relation of the European world of senses to the supposed directness of the appearance and to the world of senses in the center. Furthermore a comparison to the writings of Georg Forster shows, in which way a change of representational forms at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, which goes far beyond the genre of travel reports, was introduced.