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Tiziana Terranova (University of Naples) |
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“An active exchange of ideas with mathematics”
1. Can you explain a little what do you expect from this project?
I expect to be able to confront different understandings of topology which can explicate the challenges of such mathematical models of space without passively adopting the point of view of mathematics. This for me will imply an active effort to translate and reinvent the field of topology into that of culture and cultural studies.
2. Which cross disciplinary combinations do you expect to profit particularly from the topological approach?
It is difficult to say in advance since cross-disciplinary re-combination is already an essential part of much work about contemporary culture and society. I would welcome an active exchange of ideas with mathematics of course, but also would be interested to know what other uses of topology have been made in the human and social sciences.
3. If change is one main feature of culture today, why is this approach helpful in conceptualizing or understanding cultural change?
I think it would be useful to be able to think new images of culture which make justice to its multiple dimensions(including essentially that of time and duration) and overlappings between what might appear as distant territories separated by clear boundaries.
4. Can everything in culture really be measured in numbers?
I am not sure I have a clear understanding of what numbers are really, but I suspect that numbers can not be reduced to measures either. I would like this project to contest the idea of numbers as a clear and exact representation of reality.
5. One idea of the approach is that it avoids normative judgments. Is that not risky, or might it lead to a "neutral" and ultimately empty understanding of culture?
I think that by definition there can be no neutral understanding of culture, and at the same time not being neutral does not mean by default falling back onto a normative judgment based on transcendent categories. All research projects start from specific points and reveal or cut through specific dimensions of different research fields. It is not so much a question of judgments as of the specific values that are embedded in the research and of the openings that are thus revealed for further work.
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Outcomes