The thresholds of political asylum. A literary and cultural history

• Applicant: Dr. Till Breyer
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2021 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466038128

The research project within the framework of the Walter Benjamin Fellowship is part of my habilitation project on the history of European (political) asylum since the French Revolution. The transformations of the term 'asylum' and the practices associated with it will be described, on the one hand, as a history of law, and, on the other hand, as an arena of cultural communication processes in the age of the nation-state. Asylum, according to the guiding thesis, has become a site of precarious and contested speech since the late 18th century. Thus, to this day, the (illegal) crossing of a state border is associated with forms of narrative, sometimes even of coerced narration. Modeling asylum as a discursive process, the performative power of language and especially the institution of 'literature' comes into play.On the one hand, the planned book is located within the field of German studies, insofar as - besides French and English authors - predominantly German-language texts are scrutinized. On the other hand, it aims precisely at the transgressions of national adherence. It focuses such texts of 'German literature' that do not reproduce the multiple identities of language, territory, and state, but rather problematize them. The project aims to tie in with recent fields of research and to develop a discourse-historical conception of asylum as the site of a specific, political-literary communication on the basis of studies in law, migration, political science, and cultural studies. It thus aims both at a little-noticed area in the relationship between literature and law and at a more precise understanding of the role of cultural encodings of mobility.For the time at the University of Aix-Marseille, which could start in fall-term 2021 (september), I plan to work on book chapters on the first half of the 20th century. In these, the waves of refugees in the 1930s and 40s towards Paris and Marseille in particular play a central role. In exchange with the highly interesting cultural studies research on exile conducted at the University of Aix-Marseille by my host Prof. Alexis Nuselovici, but also by other colleagues such as Prof. Catherine Mazauric (Aix-Marseille), as well as on the basis of studies in relevant archives in Marseille, the connection between narration, legal history and the bureaucracy of flight will be elaborated and related to conceptions of asylum. During my stay, I will be able to participate in the "Laboratoire" on literature and exile initiated by Prof. Nuselovici and present my own results. I will also get to know the work of the research group "Exil et Migrations" at the Collège d'études mondiales (Paris), which is also directed by Prof. Nuselovici. At the end of my research stay, I will publish an article in a peer-reviewed literary studies journal.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: France
• Host: Professor Dr. Alexis Nuselovici