The Secret of Composition. Humboldt’s Cosmos as a Post-Colonial Space

Abstract

Alexander von Humboldt became world-famous during his American voyage (1799-1804). His last and most popular book, Kosmos, represents the entire world in five volumes (1845-1862). In a key chapter (1847) Humboldt narrates the history of knowledge as a history of violence. He diagnoses a dialectics of exploration and appropriation since Greek and Roman Antiquity. Conceived after the Latin American Revolution of Independence, Kosmos is the first contribution of German literature to post-colonial theory. From this political perspective, we can even understand the hybrid poetics of Humboldt’s work. In Kosmos, a large number of formats and sub-formats confusingly proliferate, apparently imitating tropical vegetation. This dissolution of a systematic, centered form, following the recognition of research as a colonial activity, however, is rather the effect of Humboldt’s self-critical insight into the connection between Science and Empire. He gave up the project of authorially representating the world, and instead artistically demonstrated its failure.