Critical Global Studies and Planetary History: New Perspectives on the Enlightenment

Abstract

: Though doing so invites methodological problems, the concept of ‘ the Enlightenment ’ is nevertheless in need of widening: it can no longer be reduced to any one historical period; nor can it be restricted to Europe. As a process of rationalization, scientification, technification, secularization, or democratiza-tion, forms of Enlightenment can be identified in many periods and regions. I wish to argue here that an expanded meaning opens up opportunities for an enhanced and interdisciplinary Enlightenment research. On the basis of two recent approaches to the Enlightenment — by Felicity A. Nussbaum and Dipesh Chakrabarty — I will try to show the interdependency of period and process notions, and ponder the ways in which they inform one another. A combined reading of both approaches shows how they might serve as models for a specific form of interdisciplinary global history in the heritage of the Enlightenment.