Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 70

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Popular Culture Review

past stands in a dynamic, constantly shifting
constellation to the present moment.^
Thus the observer (with his/her own world knowledge and
history) is faced with a rather interesting challenge. He/She must
become the observer of a subatomic particle, or in this case of an
historical text, which becomes the vantage point. Germanistik or
German Studies becomes the vehicle with which one circles about
this text, yet there are no boundaries since time and space do not
necessarily exist within an holographic context. We are not limited
to interpretation of the relevance of text within a single period and
specifically as a product of a single period, but nuiy relate a given
text to a text written two hundred years later and 5000 miles across
the globe. A classic example is the relation of Bhagavad Gita, Zohar
and holographic quantum theory & la Bohm. All are apparently
unrelated on the surface, but at a deeper level (and one doesn't need a
m agnifying glass to see it) they are all interrelated and
interdep>endent as a human search for reality, and all come together
independently of one another making basically the same assertions of
reality and irreality.
So too must we as researchers pull from our knowledge and be able
to make associations across ethnic, religious, socio-cultural and
political boundaries when examining texts. The text becomes a living
and breathing documentation of the continuous reaffirmation of
human existence which is boundless in its relationship to the
universe, such that the text is no longer a phenomenon of a specific
time and place to be judged within said historical context. Peter Uwe
Hohendahl explains further:
. . . the New Historian, typically, does not produce a
one-dimensional narrative or even a set of narratives
that parallel each other. For the New Historian
neither chronology nor causality or teleology are
ultimate principles, . . . The method of tracing links
and exchanges results in a nonlinear presentation
where frequent shifts from one level to another are
the norm.^