Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 1-11

3. Hegel at the Limits of Discourse

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 13-30

4. Threads of a Texture: Leibniz’s Translation of China

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 31-58

5. Reading Sovereign Subjectivity via China

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 59-95

6. Detailed Ethnicity: Perception and Gender in Travel Accounts

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 97-135

7. Bodies on Stage: Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics of Blackness

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 137-171

8. Reading History, Seeing Selves: The Turn to the Modern

   • Birgit Tautz

   Pages 173-196

9. Back Matter

   Pages 197-236

   PDF

This book investigates the contested ways in which eighteenth-century German philosophers, scientists, poets, and dramatists perceived and represented China and Africa from 1680 to 1830. Tautz demonstrates in compelling ways that reading China allowed for the integration of cultural difference into Enlightenment universalism, whereas seeing Africa exposed irreducible differences that undermined any claims of universality. By working through the case of eighteenth-century Germany and Europe, the book adds an important cross-cultural and historical dimension to questions relevant to our world today.

• aesthetics
• drama
• enlightenment
• gender
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Hegel
• perception
• philosophy

"This is a groundbreaking study in the field of eighteenth century and post-colonial studies. In style and content, Reading and Seeing reveals sophisticated and innovative scholarship, and is rich in scope. Tautz analyzes how key intellectuals and writers of German (1670-1830) were instrumental in mapping modern ethnic differences in a variety of genres and texts such as philosophy, drama, popular travelogues, and scholarly writing. Tautz shows how the writers were struggling to define their own subjectivities vis-a-vis their ethnic locals when looking for the appropriate rhetorical means or representing the ethnic Other while their own perceptions defied their representational means." - Peter Höyng, Associate Professor of German, Emory University

BIRGIT TAUTZ is Assistant Professor of German at Bowdoin College, USA.

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