DFG-research unit FOR 5700/1 - TransExile. Negotiations of aesthetics and community in post-revolutionary Mexico (1920-1960) / DFG-Forschungsgruppe TransExil: Verhandlungen von Ästhetik und Gemeinschaft im postrevolutionären Mexiko (1920-1960)

spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau (Leibniz Universität Hannover)/ Co-spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Doerte Bischoff (Universität Hamburg)

• Team of investigators from academic institutions at Hannover, Hamburg, Tübingen, Wuppertal, Berlin together with colleagues from Mexico (COLMEX, UNAM) and Costa Rica (UCR)
• Cooperating disciplines: Literary- and Cultural Studies (Spanish, German, Comparative), Latinamerican Studies as well as Cultural Anthropology and Art History/Visual Studies
• funding: German Research Council (DFG)

start: 2025

Project description

TransExile focuses for the first time on networks between exiles of different origins and local artists, writers and intellectuals in Mexico from the 1920s to the 1950s. The research group starts from the thesis that Mexico became a testing ground of national, i.e. political and cultural reconstitution during this period, in which exiles played a significant role. In particular, it examines the diverse artistic activities and productions that characterized this field. Mexico is understood as an exemplary space of contact and as a hub of further ramified networks, and Mexican reform efforts had an inspiring effect on the activities of exiles from fascist-ruled Europe, but also from dictatorships in Ibero-America and the Caribbean. Part of the reforms was Pan-American indigenism, a political and multidisciplinary movement with national variations, whose representatives were concerned with finding ways to integrate the indigenous population. The accompanying debates about concepts of ‘raza’/race and heterogeneity expanded the possibilities of thinking and shaping community and belonging. The key term TransExile is conceptualized in close relation to concepts of transnationality, but also of diasporic space, and combines interdisciplinary perspectives on translocal and transmedial networking processes. It contributes to a cultural studies reorientation of exile research by revising its traditionally national framings and definition of subject matter with regard to the dynamics of knowledge circulation, translation and transculturation. The project's innovative focus lies on the extent to which cultural-anthropological discourses, cultural-theoretical reflection and a creative and transformative approach to narratives, images and objects in cultural encounters stimulate imaginations and practices of community that complement, but also undermine, dominant political programs and positionings of the time. In addition to transfer processes between literature, art and science, the project thus focuses on fundamental questions about the interweaving of political and literary-artistic activities. Their systematic description and theoretical explication is meant to put a particularly dynamic historical field and its impact on the present into a new perspective. At the same time, it will outline subsequent research on artistic and literary negotiations of community and belonging in a world characterized by migration and global networking.

Sub-project: Visions of heterogeneity between Indo- and Afroamerica. Transexilic networks in postrevolutionary Mexico

PI: Prof. Dr. Anja Bandau (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

As part of the FOR TransExil, the sub-project examines concepts of community that emerge from the engagement of exiled and Mexican intellectuals and artists with indigenous and Afro(Latin)American cultures in post-revolutionary Mexico. It focuses on how (re)conceptualisations of Indo- and Afro-America emerged between 1920 and 1950 through the articulation of anthropological knowledge and partly opposing aesthetics and asks in particular how these concepts relate to each other. One hypothesis is that the exiles' preoccupation with Afro(Latin) America took place against the background of indigenist conceptions of America. The question arises as to what extent the latter benefited from African-American research. The investigation of reciprocal references - analogies, parallelisms, but also an emphasis on their differences - is carried out at both the institutional and the textual level. In a first step, it traces how the demand for the visibility of an Afro(Latin)America was promoted by Caribbean actors in transexilic networks with European exiles and Mexican intellectuals and led to the founding of the Instituto Interamericano del Estudio de Afroamérica (1943 in Mexico). The main focus, however, is on an analysis of intellectual and artistic objects which contrasts anthropological concepts with aesthetic practices.  

The project is organized along the three systematic axes of the FOR. It is based on the reconstruction of hitherto little-researched networks between Caribbean, Ibero-American and European intellectuals, which opened up not only political, but also scientific, cultural and aesthetic horizons. The four intellectuals at the centre are the Haitian author, politician and anthropologist Jacques Roumain (between 1942 and 1944 in Mexico), the French surrealist Benjamin Péret (between 1942 and 1948 in Mexico), the Guatemalan artist and cultural politician Carlos Mérida (1932-1940 and from 1942 until his death in Mexico) and the poet and political activist Salomón de la Selva (between 1935 and 1959 in Mexico). While interacting with political and aesthetic actors and institutions in the post-revolutionary Mexican field they all process anthropological knowledge into transmedial practices, according to the central thesis of this project. The extent to which the essayistic and artistic designs lead to transcultural visions of communities will be a chore question of the investigation. The aim is to contribute to the history of discourses on race and cultural difference in 20th century Latin America.