Svetlana Gorshenina (Lausanne)
"Inventing ‘cultural heritage’ in 19th century Turkestan"
04.05.2016 12:00 – 14:00
Am 4. Mai ist Svetlana Gorshenina (Lausanne) zu Gast im Kolloquium der Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien in München. Sie hält einen Vortrag mit dem Titel "Inventing ‘cultural heritage’ in 19th century Turkestan: Governor-general Konstantin von Kaufmann at the interface between Imperial Russia and the Persianate World".
Die am Institut d'Archéologie et des Sciences de l'Antiquité der Universität Lausanne lehrende Historikerin beschäftigt sich mit der Geschichte Zentralasiens und legt dabei einen Schwerpunkt auf Fragen der Kultur- und Kunstgeschichte sowie des Austauschs zwischen Europa und Asien. Im September 2015 referierte Svetlana Gorshenina bereits auf der Tagung "Photographing Asia. Russia’s Images of the Orient in the 19th and 20th Centuries" in München.
Die Veranstaltungen in der Reihe "Kolloquium" richten sich sowohl an die Mitglieder der Graduiertenschule, als auch an die interessierte Hochschulöffentlichkeit.
Abstract des Vortrags
General Konstantin von Kaufmann (1818-1882) used to be referred to by his contemporaries as the ‘creator of Russian Turkestan’ who’s first Governor-general he was from the inception of the governor–generalship in 1867 until 1881. As commander of the Russian forces that captured Samarkand (1868), Kuldža (1871) and Kokand (1876) while also forcing into vassal status the nominally still independent emirate of Bukhara (1868) and the khanate of Khiva (1873), Kaufmann shaped the very contours of Russian Central Asia. Having had the authority of making war and concluding peace bestowed upon him by the Tsar, Kaufmann then proceeded to laying the foundations for the government of this new Russian colony. This included heritage politics on a grand scale. Driven by a genuine interest and helped by access to ample funds, Kaufmann embarked on significant projects in areas as diverse as archaeology (including excavations at Afrasiab as well as the restauration and protection of the major Timurid monuments in Samarkand), museology (including the organisation of major national and international exhibitions and the establishment of the region’s first museums), bibliographic documentation (including the establishment of Tashkent’s national archives and of its library, home to the famous Turkestanskii Sbornik (Turkestan Collection) commissioned by Kaufmann from Vladimir Mežov), and photography (compilation of several important albums). This talk proposes to conceive of Kaufmann’s far-reaching and diverse heritage activities as part of a ‘cultural technology’ of power characterised by the complex imbrication of colonialist knowledge, the arts and humanities, colonial power, and practices of remembering and commemoration, which through the process of selection/creation of what is deemed to constitute heritage ultimately came to express the prevalent ideas of the Nation, or, indeed, the Empire.
Zeit: Mittwoch, 04.05.2016, 12-14 Uhr Uhr c.t.
Ort: München, LMU, Historicum, Amalienstr. 52, Raum K 001