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  • The Martin Buber Society  of Fellows committed to the highest standards of academic excellence and to a strong interdisciplinary orientation. Our goal is to foster innovative, path-breaking research of broad cultural meaning and relevance and to create a community of scholars who can learn from and inspire one another.

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    The best thing about the MBSF is that you get time to read up on subjects and think things through. Here you have the time, and the comfort of a community of other fellows. Many of my colleagues grew to be very important to me both intellectually and socially.

    Ellinor Morack, Germany

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    The best thing about the MBSF is that you get time to read up on subjects and think things through. Here you have the time, and the comfort of a community of other fellows. Many of my colleagues grew to be very important to me both intellectually and socially.

    Ellinor Morack, Germany

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

Indonesians and Their Arab World: Guided Mobility among Labor Migrants and Mecca Pilgrims
Mirjam Lücking. Forthcoming. Indonesians and Their Arab World: Guided Mobility among Labor Migrants and Mecca Pilgrims. Abstract

Southeast Asia Program Publications Cornell University Press

Indonesians and Their Arab World explores the ways contemporary Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia exists on the periphery of an Islamic world centered around the Arabian Peninsula. Mirjam Lücking approaches the problem of interpreting the current conservative turn in Indonesian Islam by considering the ways personal relationships, public discourse, and matters of religious self-understanding guide two groups of Indonesians who actually travel to the Arabian Peninsula—labor migrants and Mecca pilgrims—in becoming physically mobile and making their mobility meaningful. This concept, which Lücking calls "guided mobility," reveals that changes in Indonesian Islamic traditions are grounded in domestic social constellations and calls claims of outward Arab influence in Indonesia into question. With three levels of comparison (urban and rural areas, Madura and Central Java, and migrants and pilgrims), this ethnographic case study foregrounds how different regional and socioeconomic contexts determine Indonesians' various engagements with the Arab world.

SHADOW OF KNOWLEDGE IN PAUL CELAN'S "MERIDIAN" AND IN THE POEM "SWAN DANGER"
Dr. Chiara Caradonna. 2020. SHADOW OF KNOWLEDGE IN PAUL CELAN'S "MERIDIAN" AND IN THE POEM "SWAN DANGER". Wallstein Verlag GmbH. Abstract
Was muss man wissen, um Gedichte zu verstehen? Diese Frage hat man angesichts von Paul Celans Werk immer wieder gestellt. Diese Studie geht sie erneut an und schlägt als Antwort eine »Hermeneutik des Überschusses« vor. Illustriert wird diese interpretatorische Vorgehensweise anhand von Celans Gedicht »Schwanengefahr«. Eine knappe Erläuterung des Gedichts, die Celan selbst brieflich vorgelegt hat, dient dafür als Ausgangspunkt. Sie bietet zugleich die Grundlage für die Untersuchung des erkenntnis- und kunsttheoretischen Gehalts von Celans Schreiben, das Phänomenologie und Theologie miteinander verwebt. Die Arbeit liefert dabei einen neuen Zugang zu Celans Büchner-Preis-Rede »Der Meridian«. Nicht zuletzt mittels der Auswertung von Lesespuren in Celans Nachlass-Bibliothek wird seine Rezeption verschiedener erkenntnistheoretischer Positionen, von Pascal und ?estov bis hin zu Husserl und Lukács, aufgezeigt.
Der traditionellen philosophischen Entgegensetzung von Licht und Dunkel, leicht und schwer Verständlichem, die noch im Zentrum der »Meridian«-Rede stand, weicht im Laufe der 60er Jahre dem Begriff des Opaken: beschattet und Schatten spendend, bietet das Gedicht kraft seiner Undurchsichtigkeit Zuflucht.

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