070038 KU Text and Discourse Analysis (2011W)

Since the 1970s categories such as 'women', 'race' or 'class' have been redefined as 'cultural' and 'historically contingent'. This redefinition was often legitimated by the promise that essentialism and biologism could in this way be overcome, and knowledge as well as measures could be developed that would enable a more egalitarian handling of differences. But despite these claims, in the last two decades and particularly since 9/11 it became evident that with such a 'culturalisation' a homogenisation of belonging and position and the ascription of different values, progressiveness and a differentiation of cultures had not disappeared. They have re-emerged, been defined in a 'cultural' way and in this way become reaffirmed as notions such as Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Cultures', but also as political practices such as a 'dialogue of cultures' (which has been proclaimed particularly often since 9/11) show.
The course reconstructs these advances in culturalisation by means of textual and visual cultural sources and gives an overview of the main approaches of text and discourse analysis.