Orientation in the Occurrence [antikvár]

FOREWORDThis conference volume attempts to confront contemporary historical disciplines (social history, historical anthropology, history of media) and theoretical trends (ideology critique, cultural anthropology, media theory, cognitive sciences or post Lacanian psychoanalyses) with their (own) multiplicity. It investigates the difference(s) between diverse research practices and the relationship between these practices and the processes they examine. The main issues of this book can be formulated in the following questions: Do social history, the history of media and the history of culture converge or diverge? What are the parameters of their inter- and disconnectedness? If we accept the multiplicity of time(s), can we - simultaneously - speak of simultaneity? What is going on now in cultural research? How can the historical development of technical media explain the complex (hi)stories of art or culture? If we consider the arts to be the historical configurations of culturally generated or tolerated) media, do we, then, consider technical media to be the catalysts of whatever has happened or do we consider arts (see greek techné) to be the origins of technology? How shall we find our way in the "triangular labyrinth" of diverse (ancient) skills, the ever-changing corpus of knowledge and the accompanying techn(olog)ical establishments? How can these meanderings eventually lead (up) to the processes that are being discovered by (neuro)biology? How would evolutionary aesthetics or the biology of cultural history look like? To what extent is the self-perpetuating story of the trauma a personal affair? How is the level of 'positivism' established (or determined) in a research practice - what is the rhythm of the occurrence which distinguishes one (disciplinary) story from another?We invited historians, social scientists, researchers of culture(s) and media, the professionals of cognitive science, philosophers, literary historians, literary theorists, art historians, musicologists, to examine the approaches, the descriptions, and - above all - the diversity of occurrences. This call for an interdisciplinary (re)orientation implies more than an invitation for a dialogue between diverse scientific and artistic fields. The challenge includes the possibility of transitions into the realm of the other's (practical) orientation. This meeting is not meant to turn into a 'meta-conference' elevated above disciplines, theoretical approaches and research practices: rather, it is called to encourage experts to cross established boundaries and find spaces for shared rhythms.István Berszán7