False Gods
4. February 2009
Inaugural Lecture on the Dark Side of Creation
“False Gods" is the title of the inaugural lecture by Prof. Ethel Matala de Mazza on Monday, 9 February 2009. The literary scholar, who since last winter semester has been Professor of Cultural Theory and Cultural-Scientific Methods of the Center of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Integration" at the University of Konstanz, will pursue the idea that practicing cultural theory in its infancy meant to reflect on (all) beginnings. Matala de Mazza deals with writers such as Giambattista Vico and Charles de Brosses who in the 18th century elaborated creation stories that were sui generis. After God had created humanity, His unruly creatures appear to have quickly acted to populate heaven and earth with new gods. The lecture, in Hörsaal (lecture hall) A 703, will start at 8:15 pm and is dedicated to the dark sides of this creation: the black out of amnesia preceding it, the forests out of which it led, and the Enlightenment it caused to collapse. The lecture asks about the cultural productivity of not-knowing but also about those explanations promised by theory.