Simone Broders

Challenging the ‘success story’ of curiosity from original sin to intellectual virtue, this study uses an innovative methodological approach to the history of ideas as a non-teleological neural network based on current research in information technology and neurophysiology. The network offers a dynamic alternative to the ‘development’ of curiosity within the progress-oriented mythology of the Enlightenment, emphasizing the oscillation and interaction of ideas within the processes of their construction, as well as exposing the power relations behind them. The text corpus focuses on enactments of curiosity in English literature of the 'Long' Eighteenth Century (c. 1680-1818), such as transgression of boundaries, breach of taboo, gendered curiosity, sensationalism, or academic endeavour, bringing together a variety of examples from all major genres. The Age of Curiosity contributes to current debates on a post-Foucauldian renewal of Lovejoy’s history of ideas in Enlightenment studies, exploring both curiosity as an indispensable trait for the search of answers to the fundamental yet unresolved questions of ‘identity’ or ‘truth’, and its potential as cura, the care for others and the world.

The Neural Network of an Idea in Eighteenth-Century English Literature

The Age of Curiosity

Agnes Bidmon

Teresa Hiergeist

Katharina Gerund

In politischen und medialen Debatten werden unter dem häufig stigmatisierend gebrauchten Schlagwort ‚Parallelgesellschaft‘ Fragen sozialer Homogenität und Heterogenität kontrovers diskutiert. Diesem reduktionistischen Gestus setzt der Band das offene Konzept der ‚Paragesellschaft‘ entgegen und ermöglicht dadurch eine differenzierte Annäherung an mediale Reflexionen des soziopolitischen und gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit Diversität in verschiedenen Dispositiven der Gegenwart.

Simone Broders

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