The poïesis of atmosphere - interferences of fields of atmospheric knowledge around 1800

• Applicant: Dr. Ines Theilen
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2014 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 244962993

The proposed project, intended for a habilitation, investigates the poïesis of atmosphere by integrating perspectives from poetology and from the history of knowledge. As the knowledge of the atmosphere particularised around 1800, different fields and forms of knowledge started to interfere. A main scene of this interference is literature which not only depicts complex constellations of knowledge, but also educes knowledge of the atmosphere itself out of rhetorical formation and fictional trial. I will analyse light phenomena in the literary text to expose figures of interference of the different forms of knowledge of the atmosphere. Aiming at making explicit the poïesis of atmosphere, I will show how atmosphere becomes a key epistemological figure for the diagnosis of the frontiers between knowledge and agnoiology as well as for the presentation and discourse of latent forms of knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants