How to do things with cultures? International Perspectives on the Theory and Practices of Cultural Studies

The present issue of “Azimuth” aims to analyse this intellectual constel¬lation from different points of view, gathering all these efforts and different ways to study cultures under the label of “cultural studies”. In this frame, the opening essays by Lawrence Grossberg and Hartmut Böhme have the paradigmatic task to establish the state of the research and its problems with reference to the disciplines of cultural studies (Grossberg) and Kulturwissenschaft (Böhme) in their respective countries and scientific communities. The articles by Mena Mitrano and Antonio Lucci attempt to establish a link between cultural studies and Kulturwissenschaften, as they developed in their countries of first elaboration, and the Italian Thought. They aim to bring to light a possible hidden tradition (Lucci) or a contem¬porary line (Mitrano) of thought in Italy, which one could ascribe to the field specified by the definition of “cultural studies”. The essays by Joachim Fischer and Andrea Borsari provide a thematic study on two basic lines of the German declination of the studies on culture. They discuss Philosoph-ical Anthropology as a set of theories of culture made available by the new reading of three main works by Cassirer, Scheler, and Plessner (Fischer), and the contribution offered by the Cassirer-Simmel debate to the origin and new development of the Kulturphilosophie (Borsari). The survey by Giacomo Scarpelli refers to classical authors in the canon of the Kulturwissenschaft (Freud and Warburg above all), and examines the figure of the god¬dess Diana of Ephesus, providing a practical example of “cultural” analysis. The three final essays emphasize some major points characterizing the Anglo-Saxon field of studies on cultures. Michele Cometa focuses on the relationship among processes of subjectivation, the birth of the Self and the manipulation of tools from an anthropological, archaeological, and neu¬ro-cognitive perspective. Gilberto Mazzoli analyzes the example of Environmental Studies as a paradigm to understand the links between nature, culture, and environment, developing further the longue durée approach started in the last century by the Annales School. João Cezar de Castro Rocha, from his Latin-American point of view, reflects on the connections among cultures, art, and literature, applying René Girard’s anthropological theory of mimetic desire to an aesthetic-visual context. Finally, it is an honor for us to publish for the first time as an appendix to the issue an article by Friedrich A. Kittler, entitled Nietzsche oder die Erfindung der Kulturpolitik – thanks to the courtesy of Susanne Holl and the valuable work of transcription, review and introduction made by Sandrina Khaled and Tania Hron, curators of the Kittler Archiv in Berlin.