Heike Behrend, “Schrecknisse des Wissenwollens: Frageverbot und die Fraglichkeit von Fragen in der ethnografischen Feldforschung” / “The Terror of the Desire to Know: The Prohibition on Asking Questions and the Questionability of Questions in Ethnographic Fieldwork”

Humboldt University Berlin Mosse Lecture
mosselectures.wisc.edu/berlin/

Thursday, 11 June 2026, 19:15 CET

Senatssaal of Humboldt University
Unter den Linden 6
10117 Berlin
GERMANY

Sponsored by:
[mosse] LECTURES an der humboldt-universität zu berlin
The Mosse Foundation
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Institut für deutsche Literatur
Humboldt University

Moderator: Ethel Matala de Mazza (Humboldt University)

Lecture Description: My lecture addresses questions and their questionability, and thus also the questionability of the interrogating ethnologist during fieldwork. Starting from the shock of a ban on asking questions imposed on me by the elders during my first fieldwork in northwestern Kenya in the late 1970s, I will attempt to recount fragments of a history of ethnographic inquiry.

Ethnographic research emerged from journeys to foreign lands, which evoked a sense of rupture, wonder, and amazement—and thus new questions. I follow Hans Blumenberg’s »process of theoretical curiosity«, tracing the increasing professionalization and scientification of travel up to the development of question catalogs for ethnographic work. Using the examples of the research conducted by Bronisław Malinowski in Melanesia, Victor Segalen in China, and Marcel Griaule in West Africa, I will present different methods of producing ethnographic knowledge and conducting interviews, and highlight the respective horrors of the desire for knowledge, the asymmetries, and the violence inherent in them, which at the same time provoke the resistance among those being interviewed. I conclude with Klaus Heinrich’s question of the possibilities of a solidarity-based questioning, an alliance between the questioner and the respondent that might put a stop to the horrors of the desire for knowledge.

Lecture Series Theme: Du Sollst, du sollst nicht – Verbote und Gebote zwischen Religion, Recht und Politik/Thou shalt, thou shalt not. Prohibitions and Commandments between Religion, Law, and Politics

Lecture Series Description: Prohibitions and commandments are the pivots of religious and ethical ways of life, they stabilize social orders, protect against violence, and limit the abuse of power. Rights, including fundamental rights, are safeguarded by prohibitions. At the same time, prohibitions themselves are an expression of political, economic, and social power relations. Prohibiting others—or even oneself—from doing something means restricting scope for action and self-realization. The fact that this repressive function of prohibitions and taboos inherently possesses a culture-forming dimension accounts for the discontent that Sigmund Freud already attributed to civilization at the beginning of the 20th century. The productive power of prohibitions can also be traced etymologically: As far back as Old Low German, the verb »verbieten« [to forbid] [Middle Low German »vorbēden«] was closely related to the command, in the sense of an emphatic directive for action.

In the summer semester of 2026, the Mosse Lectures aim to shed light on the ambivalences of prohibitions from a historical and systematic perspective and to examine their relevance to contemporary social debates. For while criticism of prohibitions has seemed ubiquitous in many social spheres for some time now, and »destigmatization« carries positive connotations for good reasons, prohibitions are experiencing a renaissance in contexts where they become instruments of crisis management. For example, in the global discussions surrounding the necessity and legitimacy of a social media ban for children and adolescents. Or in current climate policy, which—under the banner of safeguarding intertemporal freedom—faces the task of recalibrating the relationship between intergenerational justice and a »culture of prohibition« and debating the current imperative for bans. The debates surrounding cancel culture, fake news, and digital privacy rights also revolve around the possibilities of prohibitive restrictions. The Mosse Lectures bring together perspectives from philosophy, cultural studies, ethnology, and legal studies to examine the conditions under which prohibitions appear legitimate, their cultural foundations and political functions, and, not least, the power that is constituted in the very act of prohibiting.

Photo credit: Neils Lesier for the Mosse Lectures

Heike Behrend: Ethnologist; Professor Emerita of Ethnology at the Institute of African and Egyptian Studies at Universität zu Köln. Her areas of expertise include ethnographic research, particularly in East Africa, popular African media culture, and the relationship between religion, war, and violence. She has taught and conducted research at institutions including the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Northwestern University in Evanston [USA], the International Research Center for Cultural Studies [IFK] in Vienna, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan. In her 2020 retrospective on nearly 50 years of research practice, »Menschwerdung eines Affen. Eine Autobiografie der ethnografischen Forschung« [published by Matthes & Seitz], she reverses the colonial gaze and recognizes herself as an object of ethnography through the eyes of those being studied. The book was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2021 in the »non-fiction/essays« category. Her latest work is entitled »Gespräche mit einem Toten. Gustaf Nagel, Prophet vom Arendsee« [Matthes & Seitz 2025].

Ethel Matala de Mazza has been professor of modern German literature at Humboldt University since 2010. She is the author of three monographs, including Der populäre Pakt. Verhandlungen der Moderne zwischen Operette und Feuilleton (Fischer, 2018) and Der verfaßte Körper. Zum Projekt einer organischen Gemeinschaft in der Politischen Romantik (Rombach, 1999). She has served as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Indiana, Bloomington, and the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. She received her terminal degree in German literature at the University of Munich in 2007.