Thinking–with–Connections. In conversation with Adam Lipszyc and Pawel Moscicki Sigrid Weigel …

Sigrid Weigel, director of the Zentrum für Literatur- and Kulturforschung in Berlin (ZfL) from 1999 to 2015, explains her academic policy and research concept for the ZfL, where scholars from the former Academy of Science of the GDR and from the FRG work together in interdisciplinary projects, forming a synergetic junction. The theoretical framework is directed by the transformation of the humanities into Kulturwissenschaft, based on the expertise of philology, such as reading, rhetorics, history of ideas, in short deciphering often concealed or latent meanings in texts, images, and scientific concepts. Its research focuses in two directions: (1) the afterlife (Nachleben) of mythic, cultic, and religious ideas in modern and secular history, i.e. the cultural semantic of different cultures against the background of the – in terms of religion, language, ethnic belonging – plural and divers history of Europe and European cultural, (2) the development of cultural informed approaches to the current ‘scientific society’ and the projects of interdisciplinary collaborative research together with scholars from the natural sciences (e.g. biology, neuroscience), medicine, psychoanalysis, and law.

The interview took place at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2015 and is published in the journal View. Theories and Practices ofVisual Culture, Nr. 9 (2015)