Beyond surface and depth. Explorations in mathematics and cultural analysis

Abstract

At first glance, mathematics and cultural analysis appear to be two completely different fields of theory and practice. And yet they have a fundamental overlap: in both fields, concept formation and theory formation are closely related – to the point of identification. The 2012 dgv university conference in Innsbruck provided an impressive demonstration of what this identification can mean in cultural analysis. Its declared aim of exploring the suitability and scope of the concept of ‘surface’ for cultural analysis has produced a variety of theoretical approaches, each of which focuses on different aspects. And yet: When Timo Heimerdinger traces the pejorative component of the concept of surface, when Elisabeth Timm asks whether and to what extent the desire for depth has (not) become obsolete, or when Alexa Färber explores the photo-ethnographic shallows of culture: time and again, something that seems self-evident is brought to the fore: surface is seen as the antonym of depth. This should not come as a surprise, given that Michel Foucault, in his book The Order of Things, already identified depth as a key concept of the episteme of modernity, which (also) refers to the cultural-scientific view of a ‘behind’ or a ‘below’. According to Foucault, the ideal of a knowledge order that operates in the world of the visible by means of the principles of identity and difference – in the sense of a classic taxonomy – is only a superficial glitter over a depth in which there will be talk of great hidden forces developed from their original and inaccessible core as well as of origin, causality and history in the knowledge formations of modernity.2 Guided by the metaphor of the surface, we will explore the theoretical and practical struggle for and against depth in the following and will be paying particular attention to the interplay between mathematics and cultural analysis.