1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810172403321

Titolo

The German invention of race / / Sara Eigen and Mark  Larrimore, editors

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Albany, : State University of New York Press, c2006

ISBN

0-7914-8207-3

1-4237-6620-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

vii, 221 p. : ill

Collana

SUNY series, philosophy and race

Classificazione

70.08

Altri autori (Persone)

FigalSara Eigen <1965->

LarrimoreMark J <1966-> (Mark Joseph)

Disciplina

305.8/001

Soggetti

Race - Philosophy

Philosophy, German - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The German invention of race / Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore -- What "progresses" has race theory made since the times of Leibniz and Wolff? / Peter Fenves -- Laocoön and the Hottentots / Michael Chaouli -- Policing polygeneticism in Germany, 1775: (Kames,) Kant, and Blumenbach / John H. Zammito -- Kant's concept of a human race / Susan M. Shell -- Kant and Blumenbach's polyps: a neglected chapter in the history of the concept of race / Robert Bernasconi -- Race, freedom, and the fall in Steffens and Kant / Mark Larrimore -- The German invention of Völkerkunde: ethnological discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740-1798 / Han F. Vermeulen -- 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, 1806-1830 / Tuska Benes -- Policing the Menschen = Racen / Sara Eigen -- Jewish emancipation and the politics of race / Jonathan M. Hess.

Sommario/riassunto

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."