Eigenkultur und Fremdkultur. Das Paradox einer Wissenschaft vom Fremden
Own and Foreign Culture. The Paradox of a Scientific Research of the Other

Summary/Abstract: I am arguing that even Husserl, wlw strongly emphasizes the personal and cultural experience of the other as «accessibility of what is originally inaccessible», finally yealds to the European trend of logocentrism, where the own and the alien become absorbed by common goals or rules. In ethnology taken as science of the alien lurks the paradox of a science which destroys its object the better it succeeds in explaining and comprehending it. However, in Levi-Strauss and afterwards alternatives arise, splitting ethnology in auto- and alloethnology. Finally I lay stress an the alien being what we respond to before we are able to speak about it.

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