Reading (with) Hannah Arendt: Aesthetic Representation for an Ethics of Alterity

Hannah Arendt’s interest in literature was part of a broader concern, which was inspired by her reading of Kant, with the role played by aesthetic representation in ethical and political judgment. Her rich repertoire of writings about literature deserves to be considered alongside the works more commonly associated with the ethical turn in literary studies. Arendt’s unique contribution, I argue here, is a heightened awareness of the assimilative tendencies of aesthetic and cultural representation, coupled with a critique of empathy as potentially illusory or even condescending when confronted with a political judgment that is set up to absorb difference. To recognize alterity requires us, if we follow Arendt, to understand otherness “in acting and speaking,” as she argued in The Human Condition. Much of her philosophical and political work was dedicated to understanding the obstacles facing human togetherness, so that she could suggest ways for us to overcome them. Aesthetic representation, in her view, was one of the most effective strategies for achieving community because it offers a reconstruction of another’s viewpoints that invites both an imaginative projection and a sustained cognitive effort

6 Material Culture and Diasporic Experiences: A Case of Medieval Hanse Merchants in the Baltic

The Hanseatic League, a late medieval merchant association with roots in northern German towns, is credited with the establishment of extensive economic and geographic connections and considerable impact on the development of urban culture around the Baltic and the North Sea. Its merchants, regularly crossing the Seas and settling in foreign ports, created a network of diasporic communities often maintaining close physical and emotional connections with their home towns. This chapter focuses on the late medieval German diaspora in Kalmar (Sweden) and Tallinn (Estonia) and examines cultural and material practices of these communities. It theorizes about the role and meaning of everyday material culture for Hanseatic merchants and their families, and investigates how the material objects figured in the experience of relocation. It discusses the centrality of everyday things in rebuilding the migrants’ lives after relocation, constructing a sense of diaspora community and maintaining connections with families they left behind