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DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

Photo: Creative Commons/YaYapas

Prof. em. Dr. Erhard Schüttpelz

 

Curriculum

Erhard Schüttpelz, Professor of Media Theory at the University of Siegen since 2005, studied German and English Languages and Literatures in Hannover, Exeter, Bonn, Oxford and Cologne; Feodor-Lynen scholar of the Humboldt Foundation, Columbia University; worked as a Research Assistant in Konstanz, Cologne and Vienna. Dissertation in Bonn (1994), Second Thesis exam in Konstanz (2003). Principal Investigator and Director of Graduate Training Group „Locating Media“ and of SFB Research Center „Medien der Kooperation“, at the University of Siegen. Elected as Evaluator for Media Studies at the Professional Council of the DFG; Member of the University Council Siegen. Fellowships at research institutes in Weimar, Konstanz, Berlin, Münster and Erlangen. Emeritus as of October 1, 2025.

Publications (selection)

  • Medium, Medium (Berlin 2025).
  • Deutland (Berlin 2023).
  • A Kind of World War / Eine Art Weltkrieg (Berlin 2021, with Anselm Franke).
  • Die Moderne im Spiegel des Primitiven (München 2005).
  • Figuren der Rede (Berlin 1996).

Research project: Mana, Wakan, Orenda and other non-European Categorizations of Force ca. 1900

Between 1880 and 1914, there was an academic fashion to use some (seemingly) non-European categorizations within Euro-American debates about, amongst others, Magic and Technology, Philosophical Terminology and foreign „Modes of Thought“ from the colonial peripheries. Especially convincing were references to the Polynesian term „mana“ (and „taboo“, also „hau“), and the North-American Amerindian „wakan“ and „orenda“. The project will try to reconstruct the ethnographic sources and colonial occasions of these terms and their debates, the long-term reception, and the peculiar renaissance of some of these terms in recent discussions.