The potential of the concept of contingency for scientific knowledge - exploratory attempts with an open result
The concept of contingency is very much in vogue in cultural studies. While the literary scholar Albrecht Koschorke (Constance) critically examined the postulates of increasing contingency awareness in modernity as part of the WiZeGG series of lectures this winter semester, the musicologist Frank Hentschel (Cologne), who specialises in cultural studies, addressed the question of the sense and nonsense of the concept of contingency in a very concrete way for the linguisticisation of music history.
The term also offers potential for the historiography of music, especially if it is not understood as arbitrariness, but as being based on nameable preconditions, but also including alternatives. It captivates with its genuinely inherent openness of meaning. This openness of meaning lends itself to historical facts that are always difficult to describe in a catchy way after in-depth research: On closer inspection, hardly any historical phenomenon can really be explained unambiguously or monocausally, none is one-sided, none really has compelling consequences without alternatives - if one historical fact is certain, it is that of contingency. But does this really help science?
Obviously yes. Because where contingency falls by the wayside, ideological distortions have free rein: Hentschel listed five meaningful applications of the awareness and realisation of contingency alone for the research perspective, which aims to counter normative views and their 'de-contingentisation strategies'. Further areas of possible use of the term for the descriptive to analytical level were discussed in the following workshop using examples of music from the Middle Ages to the present day - with open results on benefits and marginal benefits.