Both in scholarship on the Weimar Republic and in historical research in general, many conceptions of ‘crisis’ tend to remain vague and difficult to operationalize. These operational defects of the concept of crisis arise inevitably, we argue, from the concept’s constitutive link to human perception on the one hand and from its subsumption of complex interconnections of historical processes within different subsystems on the other. Frequently today, in both ordinary and historiographical usage, this basic openness of the concept of crisis (...) is foreclosed when it is deployed with a solely negative connotation of ‘downfall’ and ‘decline’, or of something being thrown into question or jeopardy. Such uses obscure a way in which a crisis can evoke not only the pessimistic sense of a threat to the old order but also the optimistic scenario of a chance for renewal. A one-sidedly negative understanding of crisis as prelude to calamity, we argue here, is problematic for historical research for two reasons. Firstly, it obscures comprehension of the consciousness of actors in the relevant period who at any particular moment can have had no prior knowledge of the crisis’s outcome. Secondly, it tends to reify the relevant crisis and to occlude its basic character as something narratively constructed in the accounts of both contemporaries and subsequent historiography. (shrink)

Purpose: To show that the idea of non-dualistic thinking is of great value for some of the core problems of media philosophy (which often lacks the radical approach of Josef Mitterer's concept). Method: Non-dualistic philosophy, introduced by Mitterer, has a lot in common with other thinkers' discontent with the traditional way of describing the subject-object relation. Their differences and the impasses of phenomenological, structuralist and psychoanalytic media theory shall be examined to show whether and to what extent non-dualism could do (...) better. Findings: As sociologists and some media-philosophers are already adopting some principles of non-dualism without a real framework, non-dualistic thinking offers a new insight into the way that consent/dissent is manufactured in a world where most descriptions are given in a mediated (i.e., non-interpersonal) form. Implications: If we re-establish the personal freedom of gathering knowledge individually instead of "getting nearer to the truth," the way of looking at the escapist power of media also has to be reinterpreted. The early distinction between Lumiére-like "documentation" (= truth) and Méliès-like "fiction" (= perception open to alternatives) could be another dualism, which should be expurgated by the application of Mitterer's concepts. (shrink)

While crises are omnipresent in history and historiography, the meaning of the concept of ‘crisis’ is becoming more elusive than ever. The authors scrutinise how historians use this concept with respect to contemporary history, the twentieth century and modernity in general. After briefly sketching the conceptual history of ‘crisis,’ the article addresses the questions of how the concept structures historiographical narratives, what types of crises historians distinguish, and whether we should retain the concept or refrain from using it, considering its (...) vagueness, suggestive power and political instrumentalisation. (shrink)

Summary: Weber's book... does away with the overcome, but seemingly indispensable truth concept behind every medium. Reporting reality does not mean rigidity but accepting changing (the) realities by reporting. The new "basis theory in media studies" (p. 351), which is the aim of the author, is due to find a widespread field for practical use -- or at least it should, in a world not biased by dualistic thinking.