The German Invention of Race

Description

In The German Invention of Race, historians, philosophers, and scholars in literary, cultural, and religious studies trace the origins of the concept of "race" to Enlightenment Germany and seek to understand the issues at work in creating a definition of race. The work introduces a significant connection to the history of race theory as contributors show that the language of race was deployed in contexts as apparently unrelated as hygiene; aesthetics; comparative linguistics; anthropology; debates over the status of science, theology, and philosophy; and Jewish emancipation.

The concept of race has no single point of origin, and has never operated within the constraints of a single definition. As the essays in this book trace the powerful resonances of the term in diverse contexts, both before and long after the invention of the scientific term around 1775, they help explain how this pseudoconcept could, in a few short decades, have become so powerful in so many fields of thought and practice. In addition, the essays show that the fateful rise of racial thinking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was made possible not only by the establishment of physical anthropology as a field, but also by other disciplines and agendas linked by the enduring associations of the word "race."

Introduction: The German Invention of Race
Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore

I. Modes of Difference: Race, Color, Culture

1. What “Progresses” Has Race-Theory Made Since the Times of Leibniz and Wolff?
Peter Fenves

2. Laocoön and the Hottentots
Michel Chaouli

II. Race in Philosophy: the Problem of Kant

3. Policing Polygeneticism in Germany, 1775: (Kames,) Kant, and Blumenbach
John H. Zammito

4. Kant’s Concept of a Human Race
Susan M. Shell

5. Kant and Blumenbach’s Polyps: A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Concept of Race
Robert Bernasconi

6. Race, Freedom and the Fall in Steffens and Kant
Mark Larrimore

III. Race in the Sciences of Culture

7. The German Invention of Völkerkunde: Ethnological Discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740–1798
Han F. Vermeulen

8. Gods, Titans, and Monsters: Philhellenism, Race, and Religion in Early-Nineteenth-Century Mythography
George S. Williamson

9. From Indo-Germans to Aryans: Philology and the Racialization of Salvationist National Rhetoric, 1806–30
Tuska Benes

IV. Race in the Political Sphere

10. Policing the Menschen = Racen
Sara Eigen

11. Jewish Emancipation and the Politics of Race
Jonathan M. Hess

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791482070
• Langue: English

Extrait

The German nvention Race of

edited by Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore

The German Invention of Race

SUNY series, Philosophy and Race Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, editors

I

The German nvention of Race

Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore, editors

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2006 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The German invention of race / edited by Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore.  p. cm. — (SUNY series, philosophy and race)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 0-7914-6677-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)  1. Race—Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, German—History. I. Larrimore,  Mark J. (Mark Joseph), 1966– . III. Eigen, Sara. III. Series.

 HT1521.E42 2006  305.8'001—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2005021342

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction: The German Invention of Race Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore

I. Modes of Difference: Race, Color, Culture 1 What “Progresses” Has Race-Theory Made Since the Times of Leibniz and Wolff? Peter Fenves 2Laocoönand the Hottentots Michel Chaouli

II. Race in Philosophy: the Problem of Kant 3 Policing Polygeneticism in Germany, 1775: (Kames,) Kant, and Blumenbach John H. Zammito 4 Kant’s Concept of a Human Race Susan M. Shell 5 Kant and Blumenbach’s Polyps: A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Concept of Race Robert Bernasconi 6 Race, Freedom and the Fall in Steffens and Kant Mark Larrimore

III. Race in the Sciences of Culture 7 The German Invention ofVölkerkunde: Ethnological Discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740–1798 Han F. Vermeulen v

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C ONTENTS

Gods, Titans, and Monsters: Philhellenism, Race, and Religion in Early-Nineteenth-Century Mythography George S. Williamson

From Indo-Germans to Aryans: Philology and the Racialization of Salvationist National Rhetoric, 1806–30 Tuska Benes

IV. Race in the Political Sphere 10 Policing theMenschen = Racen Sara Eigen 11 Jewish Emancipation and the Politics of Race Jonathan M. Hess

Contributors

Index

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167

185

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215

C ONTENTS

Acknowledgments

vii

This book is the product of much hard work, institutional support, and a liberal dose of serendipity. The editors would like to thank the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel, where we met over afternoon coffee; the German Department at Harvard University, which hosted the 2000 conference whose papers laid the foundations for the present book; and the Max Kade Foundation, which provided major funding for the confer- ence. We are grateful to Robert Bernasconi for his steady support of this project, and to our research assistants Michael Macomber, Steven M. Press, Sara Szmodis, and Joseph Tinguely for their painstaking efforts in preparing the manuscript for press. As a final note, we would like to thank our editors at SUNY Press, who were all a pleasure to work with.

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Introduction

The German Invention of Race

Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore

Within four decades straddling the close of the eighteenth century, the word “race” was adopted in remarkably similar forms across Europe as a scientific term denoting a historically evolved, quite possibly permanent, and essen- tially real subcategory of the more inclusive grouping of living beings con- stituting a single species. The emergence of ascientifictheory of race was the product of often fierce debate among scientists and philosophers, many of whom were clustered at universities in German-speaking lands. The figures most often cited include Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Samuel Thomas Sömmerring, Georg Forster, and Christian Meiners. The complex and high-stakes philosophical and scientific debates, how- ever, were not conducted in isolation. They were influenced, irritated, and accompanied by lively discussions and discoveries in theoretical and practical medicine, geology, geography, aesthetic theory, theology, and philology, to name just a few fields. As might be expected from such a multiplicity of discourses, theories regarding the “nature” and the usefulness of the race category varied widely. Subsequent histories of the idea of race have focused upon the details of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century racial science, and have tended to oversimplify eighteenth-century positions. In the process, they have significantly underestimated the conflicted legacy of the Enlighten- ment. The variety of race concepts has not received the thoughtful attention that scholars have devoted to the theories and practices of later periods. Nor has the variety of alternatives to these concepts been considered. There have been and continue to be important investigations that look further back into the history of human cultures in order to identify and compare attempts at ascertaining patterns of human difference, many of

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