Nuove intersezioni: crimine e storia nella narrativa Italiana al cambio di millennio

My research investigates a recent tendency in Italian literature, characterized by elements of renewal within the novel-writing tradition and of discontinuity with postmodern culture. It proposes an interpretation of the genres of the historical novel and crime fiction in the last fifteen years, in order to underline the important role played by these types of narrative in revitalizing contemporary Italian literature. These modalities of writing are considered both individually and in their connections beyond a traditional notion of genre, emphasizing those characteristics which may be assumed as irreconcilable with a postmodern approach to fiction and those which, furthermore, seem to indicate attempts to take a new course. In particular, my study analyses the recent literary tendency to combine the elements of ‘crime’ and ‘history’ in order to represent political and social reality, and how the works examined relate to postmodern narrative. For this reason, I pay particular attention to the relationship between literature and the past and to the socio-political aspects connected with the praxis of narrating, offering an original interpretation of the way in which the authors studied engage with these characteristics.

The legitimation of risk and democracy: A case study of Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh, India

This thesis explores the inter-related attempts to secure the legitimation of risk and democracy with regard to Bt cotton, a genetically modified crop, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The research included nine months of ethnographic fieldwork, extensive library and newspaper research, as well as university attendance in India, undertaken between June, 2010 and March, 2011. This comparative study (involving organic, NPM and Bt cotton cultivation) was conducted in three villages in Telangana, a region which was granted secession from Andhra Pradesh in July, 2013, and in Hyderabad, the state capital. Andhra Pradesh is renowned for its agrarian crisis and farmer suicides, as well as for the conflict which Bt cotton represents. This study adopts the categories of legitimation developed by Van Leeuwen (2007; 2008) in order to explore the theory of risk society (Beck, 1992; 1994; 1999; 2009), and the Habermasian (1996: 356-366) core-periphery model as means of theoretically analysing democratic legitimacy. The legitimation of risk and democracy in relation to Bt cotton refers to normative views on the way in which power should be exercised with regard to risk differentiation, construction and definition. The analysis finds that the more legitimate the exercise of power, the lower the exposure to risk as a concern for the collective. This also has consequences for the way in which resources are distributed, knowledge constructed, and democratic praxis institutionalised as a concern for social and epistemic justice. The thesis argues that the struggle to legitimate risk and democracy has implications not only for the constitution of the new state of Telangana and the region’s development, but also for the emergence of global society and the future development of humanity as a whole.

The political philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi: A close reading of the philosophical foundations of cooperative communitarianism

The thesis is a historical and philological study of the mature political theory of Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) focused on Philosophical Foundations of Cooperative Communitarianism (1939), a full translation of which is included. As the name suggests, it was a methodological and normative communitarianism, which critically built on liberalism, Marxism and Confucianism to realise a regional political community. Some of Miki’s Western readers have wrongly considered him a fascist ideologue, while he has been considered a humanist Marxist in Japan. A closer reading cannot support either view. The thesis argues that the Anglophone study of Japanese philosophy is a degenerating research programme ripe for revolution in the sense of returning full circle to an original point. That means returning to the texts, reading them contextually and philologically, in principle as early modern European political theory is read by intellectual historians, such as the representatives of Cambridge School history of political thought. The resulting reading builds critically on the Japanese scholarship and relates it to contemporary Western and postcolonial political theory and the East Asian tradition, particularly neo-Confucianism. The thesis argues for a Cambridge School perspective radicalised by the critical addendum of geo-cultural context, supplemented by Geertzian intercultural hermeneutics and a Saidian ‘return to philology’. As against those who have seen radical reorientations in Miki’s political thought, the thesis finds gradual progression and continuity between his neo-Kantian, existentialist, Marxian anthropology, Hegelian and finally communitarian phases. The theoretical underpinnings are his philosophical anthropology, a structurationist social theory of praxis, and a critique of liberalism, Marxism, nationalism and idealism emphasising concrete as opposed to abstract theory and the need to build on existing cultural traditions to modernise rather than westernise East Asia. This post-Western fusion was imagined to be the beginning of a true and pluralistic universalism.

Literaturvermittlung auf dem Weg von gestern nach morgen - eine auslandsgermanistische Perspektive

Literaturvermittlung in der Auslandsgermanistik ist traditionell die Domäne der Literaturwissenschaft, die allerdings eine Antwort darauf schuldig bleibt, was jemanden zu einem guten Literaturvermittler macht und worin die besondere Qualität von Lernprozessen besteht, die Studierende im Laufe der Semester anhand von deutschsprachiger Literatur machen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass Literatur als Bildungsgut und ihr Stellenwert im Curriculum heutzutage nicht mehr so selbstverständlich akzeptiert ist wie vor Jahrzehnten, sollte sich die Auslandsgermanistik solchen und ähnlichen Fragen bereitwilliger stellen und offen diskutieren, wie in künftigen Jahren das studentische Interesse an Literatur wach gehalten bzw. neu entfacht werden kann. Ein wichtiger Schritt in diese Richtung wäre ein Ernster-Nehmen literaturdidaktischer Fragestellungen und insbesondere der Erforschung von Aspekten der vernachlässigten Lehrund Lernpraxis. Es wird dafür plädiert, sich in der Literaturvermittlung künftig nicht ausschließlich an wissenschaftlichen Kategorien zu orientieren, sondern diese auch als eine Form ästhetischer Praxis zu begreifen.