Thomas Bauer, Dr. phil.

Project

The Culture of Ambiguity

Die vormoderne arabisch-islamische Kultur (8.-19. Jahrhundert) zeichnet sich gegenüber dem Abendland durch eine weit größere Ambiguitätstoleranz aus. Dies zeigt sich in vielen Bereichen der islamischen Wissenschaften (etwa in der Koranexegese, im Islamischen Recht und in den Sprachwissenschaften, wo man, besonders in der Rhetorik, maßgebliche Resultate erzielte), in zahlreichen Gattungen der Literatur, aber auch in der Mentalität der Menschen und in den sozialen Verhältnissen (Toleranz gegenüber religiösen Minderheiten; Wahrnehmung von Fremdheit; hohe soziale Mobilität). Bezeichnend ist auch die weitgehend konfliktfreie Koexistenz religiöser und säkularer Diskurse in der klassischen islamischen Kultur, die in auffälligem Kontrast zur heute postulierten Untrennbarkeit von Islam und weltlicher Sphäre steht. Unter diesen spezifischen Voraussetzungen blieben dem Islam viele der Krisen des Abendlandes erspart, doch liegt hierin auch eine wichtige Ursache für die aktuellen Konflikte zwischen Islam und westlicher Moderne. Der Zusammenstoß des Islams mit einer Kultur, die eine solche Ambiguitätstoleranz kaum kannte und tendenziell ablehnte, musste zu einer Neuformulierung der Grundlagen des Islams in Form modernitätskonformer Ideologien führen, die sich sowohl in ihrer liberalen pro-westlichen Ausprägung als auch in ihrer aggressiven islamistischen Variante gleichermaßen durch die weitgehende Ablehnung der eigenen kulturellen Tradition auszeichnet. Die Erforschung kultureller Ambiguität verspricht nicht nur Einsichten in andere Kulturen, sondern auch ein besseres Verständnis der eigenen
kulturellen Grundlagen, deren Relativität anders als kulturvergleichend nicht erkannt werden kann.

Lektüreempfehlung

Bauer, Thomas. Vom Sinn der Zeit: Aus der Geschichte des arabischen Chronogramms. Arabica 50
(2003): 501-531.
Bauer, Thomas. Rhetorik: Arabische Kultur. In Rhetorik: Begriff Geschichte Internationalität, herausgegeben von
Gert Ueding, 283-300. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005.
Bauer, Thomas und Angelika Neuwirth, Hrsg. Ghazal as World Literature: Transformations of a Literary
Genre. Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2005 (Beiruter Texte und Studien, Bd. 89, darin S. 9-55).

Colloquium, 24.04.2007

The Variants of God. The Koran in the Age of Ambiguity

1. Individuals differ in the degree of their tolerance of phenomena of ambiguity. In psychology, Else Frenkel-Brunswik introduced the term "(in-)tolerance of ambiguity" in 1949 (Intolerance of ambiguity as an emotional and perceptual personality variable, Journal of Personality 18, 108-143). But social groups also differ in their stance toward ambiguity. It therefore makes sense to establish cultural ambiguity as a direction of research in the cultural sciences, for example in Historical Anthropology.

Definition: A phenomenon of cultural ambiguity is present when, over a long period of time, a concept, behavior, or object bears two opposite or competing, clearly different meanings, when a social group draws norms for and attributes meanings to individual areas of life simultaneously on the basis of opposing or widely disparate discourses, or when disparate interpretations of a phenomenon are simultaneously accepted within a group, whereby none of these interpretations can claim exclusive validity.

2. Islamic culture of the post-formative but pre-modern period (examined here in examples from Egypt and Syria in the period from ca. 1000 to 1500) is characterized by a high degree of tolerance for ambiguity, while Zygmunt Bauman notes about Western modernity: "The typically modern practice, the substance of ... modern intellect, of modern life, is the effort to exterminate ambivalence ... and to suppress or eliminate everything that could not or would not be precisely defined." (Modernity and Ambivalence, New York 1999, p. 7-8).

3. Thus, the Arab-Islamic scholarly culture is ruled by two definitely contradictory ideals: On the one hand, the scholar should distinguish himself by piety and religious scholarship and, on the other hand, he should be an elegant gentiluomo, whereby the latter also meant composing poems about love and wine. While pre-modern Arab-Islamic culture did not suffer under this contradiction, in the modern Arab world such poems trigger confusion and revulsion. The result is that the Arab world has an extremely tense relationship to its own literary tradition.

4. An especially revealing and for Islamic culture fundamental example showing that classical Islamic culture did not strive to eliminate, but to tame ambiguity is offered by its approach to the text of the Koran. The traditional conception of the text of the Koran, here exemplified by a work of the Damascene scholar Ibn al-Jazari (1350-1429), emphasized the primarily oral transmission of the Koran and presupposed that the Koran, God's uncreated word, was revealed with numerous, inexhaustibly plenteous text variants, which make it easier for a person to receive the text, but at the same time charge him with the task of "taming" the sprawling ambiguity, i.e., of determining the probabilities of divergent traditions. To avoid risks in ritual use, ten different "readings" of the Koran (qira'a, plural qira'at) are generally accepted, but other variants whose authenticity is less probable are still the objects of Koranic studies. As a result of the simultaneous validity of several readings, the Koran is not a linear, but a multi-dimensional text with open margins. The totality of all variants of the divine text is as little known to Man as is the inexhaustible fullness of his interpretations of the text. This essentially "post-modern" understanding of the text is neither taken seriously by Western Orientalism nor accepted by Muslims of various currents. Pro-Western liberals and fundamentalists and Salafists alike deny or remain silent about the existence of variants of the text of the Koran. Christian missionaries and Muslim apologists quarrel over whose Holy Scriptures have fewer variants. Cultivating the qira'at has become the domain of a small group of Muslims still bound to traditional Islam (including many Sufis), while the traditional, ambiguity-tolerating, "post-modern" understanding of the text is little known today.

Publications from the Fellows' Library

Bauer, Thomas (Berlin, 2011)

Die Kultur der Ambiguität : eine andere Geschichte des Islams

Bauer, Thomas (Chicago, Ill., 2007)

In search of "post-classical literature" : a review article

Bauer, Thomas (2006)

Die Badīʿiyya des Nāṣīf Al-Yāziğī und das Problem der spätromantischen arabischen Literatur

Bauer, Thomas (2005)

Arabische Kultur

Bauer, Thomas (2005)

Vertraute Fremde : das Bild des Beduinen in der arabischen Literatur des 10. Jahrhunderts

Bauer, Thomas (2005)

Mamluk literature : misunderstandings and new approaches

Bauer, Thomas (Würzburg, 2005)

Ghazal as world literature Beiruter Texte und Studien ; ...

Bauer, Thomas (2003)

Literarische Anthologien der Mamlūkenzeit

Bauer, Thomas (2003)

Vom Sinn der Zeit : aus der Geschichte des arabischen Chronogramms

Bauer, Thomas (2003)

Communication and emotion : the case of Ibn Nubātah's Kindertotenlieder