Research Area B Satire (B1)

Project Leaders: Hans Harder, Michael Ursinus, Judit Árokay, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Susanne Enderwitz, Barbara Mittler
Project Members: Chaiti Basu, Elif Elmas, Eliane Ursula Ettmüller, Sonja Margaretha Hotwagner, Prabhat Kumarm, Swarali Paranjape, I-Wei Wu

This project examined the production of satire in South, East and West Asian traditions during the high tide of European colonialism and imperialism, i.e. the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. We look at satire as a communicative tool of gauging cultural asymmetries. It is, we assert, the satirical mode of expression that is most apt to portray, measure and adjust the various upside-downs that occurred to traditional cultures in Asia in the course of their asymmetrical cultural contact with Europe. As an essentially moralist endeavour, satire is impossible without a (however hidden) statement about how things should be. In investigating Asian satire, we hoped to be able to unearth and highlight textual and visual sources that tend to be ignored or at least downscaled in their respective canons, and to find gravitational points of identity around which topsy-turvy realities are made to revolve.