Discourses of Cultural and Political Self-Assertion in East Asia

Within the DIJ’s research on “Japan in Asia”, a new project under the title “Discourses of Cultural Uniqueness in Japan, China and Korea” deals with issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and regionalisation. A first conference on this topic took place at the DIJ in November 2000 and the project was also presented in a panel at the 2001 ICAS Congress in Berlin (see the report in Newsletter 14). The next international conference will take place in November 2001 in Seoul and will concentrate on issues such as the types of self-assertion in China, Japan and Korea; the politics of everyday discourses; (self-) presentation in history textbooks; and the historiography of science in East Asia. Also, in accordance with the location of the conference, Korea will form a special focus. The symposium is organised in co-operation with the Goethe-Institute in Seoul and the Institute for Comparative Cultural Studies of Ōsaka University. The conference will take place in German.