Contesting and Transmissing Polyphonic Jewish Heritage. Strategies and Practices of Authorization

• Applicants: Dr. Ina Henning; Professor Dr. Markus Tauschek
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Musicology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497252379

The interdisciplinary project examines the complex negotiation and transmission of polyphonic Jewish heritage in the sense of critical heritage studies by conducting two case studies. The central aim is not to conceive of Jewish heritage as a homogeneous entity as has often been the case to date, but to empirically work out its ambivalences and complexities and, in particular, its genesis in strategies and practices of transmission. In the sense of the Priority Programme, the project works out on the one hand how Jewish heritage is updated, coupled to contemporary discourses and thereby reconfigured. Furthermore, it shows how this reconfiguration can also be made fruitful for cultural-applied music education at schools, a context in which Jewish heritage has so far been presented in a largely homogenised way.Inspired by the perspectives of Critical Heritage Studies, the project makes visible forms and strategies of authorisation (in the initiatives studied as well as in didactic teaching models) in formats and practices of the transmission of Jewish heritage. The project asks with involvement of Jewish actors about the normative implications in a way that is critical of governmentality and, in particular, examines how monolithic readings of Jewish heritage are called into question with the help of contemporary concepts of heterogeneity and diversity.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2357: Jewish Cultural Heritage