H. H. Behr´s Interdisciplinary Writing: A Contribution to the History of the Latent

This project will, for the first time, reconstruct and survey the life and scientific and literary work of the German- American physician, botanist and author Hans Hermann Behr (1812-1904). Upon this foundation, and applying the interdisciplinary premises of cultural theory, the project will analyse the interdependence between knowledge and poiesis to be found in Behr`s oeuvre and the scientific and cultural transfer relationships underlying that interdependence. The spectrum of Behr`s thematisation of knowledge reaches from realist to proto-avantgarde writing. It constitutes a transnational aspect of nineteenth-century cultural history that has so far remained unexplored. Against the backdrop of the current paradigm shift in science ushered in by globalisation and intensified cultural contacts, we regard the development of Behr`s oeuvre as symptomatic of the complex discursive economy of modernity, and especially of talk about alterity. A scholarly edition and a literary-historical evaluation will not only fill an important gap in German studies and American studies, but also raise comparatist questions that will be addressed within a cultural studies framework. The basis of our proposal is to investigate Behr`s transmission of and reflection on knowledge through popular literature, asking how its interlocking of homo scientificus, homo litterarius and homo politicus serves to propagate critical thinking. The first interdisciplinary challenge posed by this undertaking is to deliver a discursive and epistemic analysis of the specific concatenation of the surrounding dominant nineteenth-century discourses. Deploying the forms of the novel and the grotesque to popularise the research aporias of his day and make them commensurable for his audience, Behr deserves investigation as a rare exemplar of the natural scientist writing in an enlightenment mode. If Behr`s use of humour is interpreted as a reference to the experience of latency, and thus as a constitutive epistemological component of modernity, the second interdisciplinary challenge now arises, this time in the history of knowledge: how to systematise humour`s poetological role and its function in the theory of latency. Bearing in mind that cultural-studies oriented philology has not yet exhaustively studied the contribution of literature particularly popular literature to the economy of knowledge and memory during phases of epochal transition such as modernity, and that the call for "Wiedergutmachung historischen Unrechts" 1 (reparations for historical wrongs) lays down one of the chief tasks of current German studies, we consider an engagement with Behr to be promising in terms of both the strategy and the theory of science. A long-overdue detailed enquiry into the epistemology and poetics of Behr`s work will allow us using a rigorous terminology derived from the knowledge-economy of humour to calibrate the manifold theoretical models of the latent that have been established in genealogical and archaeological thinking. 1 Schlaffer, Heinz: Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. München-Wien: Carl Hanser 2002, 20.

Reconstructing the life and scientific and literary work of the German-Californian physician, biologist and author Hans Hermann Behr (1818-1904) reveals a nearly forgotten biography in the cultural and scientific life of the pioneer period in San Francisco, and uncovers his important contribution to the tradition of the German political adventure novel and the American grotesque. On the basis of abundant archival discoveries, the project has been able to reconstruct Behrs career trajectory, from politically and socially aware sympathizer of the 1848 revolution towards a cosmopolitan pioneer within the emerging multiculturalism of American society. The motivic and literary-historical analysis of his novels Auf fremder Erde (1864), set in Australia, and Dritte Söhne (1870), set in California clarifies Behrs contribution to the humoresque depiction of the revolutionary events of 1848 and of the German quest for identity in an increasingly globalised world. This makes him a key figure of political memory as evident in his reception by Wilhelm Raabe, which is analysed here for the first time. Attention is also paid to the figure of the outsider, shedding light on the cultural-historic framing of contemporary societal critique and leading to a reading of Behrs main creative output as meta-adventure novels. Furthermore, Behr applies an undogmatic position characteristic of the Enlightenment in his concern with ethnographic and ecological issues. By analysing his position with due attention to the ways in which it calls for techniques of distancing and alienation, such as humour, irony and the grotesque, a new approach is opened to the phenomenon of latency. From the perspectives of literary theory and theories of difference, latency becomes perceptible as a neutral constant which ceaselessly oscillates between polar ascriptions in the production of knowledge. Latency drives the act of narration by calling into question all the evaluations presented in the text, ultimately demonstrating the ambivalence of all forms of narration and description. This becomes especially clear in Behrs late collection of grotesques The Hoot of the Owl (1904), written in English, in which he queries the propositional horizon of scientific explanations and with it the credibility of the scientific establishment. Publicly debated research findings and interpretive claims in biology, ethnology, chemistry, archaeology, history and psychology are played off against each other, while popular scientific modes derived from these fields are parodied. Behrs grotesques are indications of the complex interweaving of cultures and the associated hybrid identity of many immigrants, and a mise- en-scène of a critical cultural consciousness: they go beyond the German- American tradition to constitute a self-analysis and cultural therapy which is rarely encountered.