THEORIZING AND PRACTICING HISTORY AS THE METABOLIZATION OF THE WORLD

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS ULRICH GUMBRECHT

Gregory Jones-Katz

In this exchange, Gregory Jones-Katz and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht discuss Gumbrecht’s oeuvre, his book on Denis Diderot, and what this all might offer historians as they grapple with a transforming professional and intellectual landscape in the not-so-early twenty-first century. Of broad significance to the field of historical theory and practice are Gumbrecht’s explorations into the “presence”-based epistemologies embedded in often-canonical cultural protagonists’ lives and works. In his new book on Diderot, for example, Gumbrecht creates and employs a concept of our metabolic relationship to the environment to understand Diderot’s “implicit epistemology” as a way of thinking that was peripheral to Enlightenment and its “historical worldview.” Gumbrecht’s concept of metabolism describes certain intellectual operations that were emblematic for Diderot (and his times) and can also prove useful for historians (and humanists) in different contemporary contexts.

Image: Orange, red, and green abstract painting by Steve Johnson (11 November 2018)