Mimesis, Rhetoric and Culture

by Alexander Henn

In the announced presentation I will pursue linguistic and rhetoric devices that operate in contexts of cultural encounter. In doing so, I will build on a case study on Goa, the small track of land on the Indian west-coast that has been the site of a centuries-lasting encounter between Indian and Portuguese, Hindu and Catholic traditions. Of particular theoretical interest will be to argue that, although translation and mimesis are related modes of linguistic (and by implication cultural) mediation, the two concepts do open for a different evaluation of rhetoric in the inter-cultural context.